Quote:
Originally Posted by willmanc
I know, I know... We should each be individuals and design our own visions of the show we are producing. Please bare with me!
1) What are the copyright laws with re-creating (stealing) a broadway set design?
2) Was anything settled with the URINETOWN/Akron-Chicago shows?
3) Is there anything to learn from recreating a broadway set on a high school budget?
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willmanc, please start a new thread in the "New Members Area" introducing yourself. We like to know to whom we are talking. Tell us who you are, where you are, what you're doing and what you'd like to do.
To answer your questions, to which I suspect you already know the answers and are just looking for validation:
1) Whether or not the designs are copyrighted, intellectual property laws apply, and in the US at least,
anything is actionable. Almost every drawing issued by professional designers includes the boilerplate
<let me find one so I can quote it exactly>
All concepts, ideas, and design elements shown on this drawing and any other documentation are the exclusive intellectual property of the Designer and may only be used for this project. Any other use is prohibited, unless the Designer has granted express written permission. Review of this document implies acceptance of the above terms and conditions.
2) What the OP is alluding to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/theater/15urin.html. I suspect that since both productions closed, and there is/was no money to be had, the lawyers advised their clients to drop the pending litigation.
3) While it's highly unlikely that a high school is going to fly Norma Desmond's mansion for
Sunset Boulevard, I can't see doing
Miss Saigon without a helicopter (or at least a rotating
gobo) onstage. In high school and college, we often used the groundplans from the back of the Samuel French edition of the play when we were doing non-executed light plots for teaching purposes. One thing we were cautioned on, though, is that these plans are/were often drawn up by the original
stage manager or prop person, and are generally not to any particular scale. If Neil Simon in his notes calls for a "door to the bedroom SL" and a "door to the hallway SR" and "a large picture window UC with a view of the New York skyline beyond," the scenic design is going to resemble the original Broadway production. So to answer your question, there is MUCH to learn from an original Broadway production, but often (always?) a high school is not going to have the resources to duplicate a design exactly, so that challenge and excitement comes from suggesting, or re-interpreting, an original design, i.e. the rotating gobo to suggest the helicopter, instead of the real thing onstage. While I can't imagine
Cats taking place anywhere but in a junkyard, staging
A Midsummer Night's Dream in a circus owes to Perter Brooks, but he does not deserve a royalty, in my opinion.
Likewise, I feel there's a difference between seeing a Broadway show and "copying" some of the ideas, and re-building the show from the original drawings. This is part of the reason the original drawings are so difficult to obtain. Just my 2¢. Hope this helps answer your question.
Edit: Sorry to duplicate some of the above answers. I must type slower than some people.