BackStage Utah

At lil' ol' Snow College, the last couple weeks of rehearsals the Stage Manager would be on book and circle every single word you delivered that was different from the script.  The directors there expected us to know it word-for-word perfect, it was awesome!  That's the only theatre I've worked with that has done that.  In fact, it's the most professional theatre I've ever worked with, and it's a junior college.

My surprise wasn't that Snow was professional, but that no "professional"* theatre I've worked for has been the professional world we were being prepared for.

*I aknowledge that we all have different views of what a professional theatre is.  And that when said often, professional is a strange word.

Ahhh, well I haven't worked for an Equity show yet, so you give me hope in the standards of theatrical deployment, Dark Knight!   

I absolutely hate it when theater's do this. IMHO it is the ultimate in hypocrisy. You don't want to offend anyone but you are breaking the law pure and simple. Now grant it, theater's when applying for the rights to a show can make their requests for cuts along with their application. Most playwrights don't have a problem with it and usually grant permission. I know the Utah Shakespearean Festival does this occasionally when there is an "F" word or certain over the top vulgarities and each time the playwright has given their permission and even suggested the replacement dialogue themselves. So if they have permission I have no problem with it. But when they don't, as far as I'm concerned they should be sued!

Despite all the hoopla that happened with the Grove theater a while back with the Neil Simon play, there is one thing that never got brought up in that situation.  In Simon's autobiography there is a mention of him learning that a high school was doing a play of his that included an F-bomb or two.  His remark in his own book went something like,"I hope they dropped those from the script."  In other words, he fully expected, and hoped, that the school would consider the effect of that language on the students and their audience.

It opens the door.

From what I've seen in my meager experience, if you can get past the gate keepers (lawyers and agents) and communicate directly with the playwright, they're generally pretty open-mined.  I saw a production of Miller's "A View From the Bridge" at UCSD about thirtysomething years ago that had been adapted--with permission from the author--from a forties setting in New York with immigrant Italians to a seventies setting in San Diego with immigrant Mexicans.  From the Brooklyn Bridge to the Coronado Bay Bridge.  All the guy had to do was ask.

Speaking for myself as a playwright, I wouldn't mind hearing from someone who wanted to tinker with one of my plays.  (Who am I kidding?  I'd just love for someone to want to do of of my plays.)

I know, if I were rich and famous, hearing from all those schools and community theaters would get pretty old and intrusive.  However, if there were that many trying to contact me, I think I'd come up with some officially "sanitized" version of the script.

Besides, you can't be too hardnosed about it.  You gonna sue every actor who goes up on a scene and cuts five minutes from the show?  (Kidding.  Just kidding.)