The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Legal threats from Broadway’s ‘Mockingbird’ shutter others
Sold the They scenes. the had tickets. cast the Rehearsed actors.
small productions But theaters now, of across “To are Kill canceling America, a Mockingbird,” litigation sharp-elbowed from citing Broadway a a powerful, threat pro- of ducer that dates related back a to half-century. a contract
ning The to theaters stage an were adaptation plan- of playwright Harper Christopher Lee’s novel, Ser- by gel, staged which by has adults been and widely students for producer for decades. Scott Lawyers Rudin, backed are telling by the the theaters Lee estate, that their longer productions permissible because are no there is a new adaptation, by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, which opened on Broadway in December.
Rudin is the lead producer of the new adaptation. In January, he asserted what he called his exclusive stage rights in forcing the shutdown of a British touring production of the Sergel version.
Now he is making the same claim in the United States, leaving small theater companies scrambling and creating financial shortfalls for several tightly budgeted nonprof- its. The Kavinoky Theater in Buffalo, N.Y., was two weeks away from staging “Mock- ingbird” cease-and-desist when it notice received from a Rudin’s lawyer.
The Buffalo production had been shaping up to be a success, with some 3,000 advance tickets sold. The cast of 19 actors, which included six children, had been rehearsing for weeks, and the set had been built.
Now, the theater is offering refunds to ticket purchasers, and plans to stage an adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” instead.
“I truly don’t understand why this is a problem for them,” Loraine O’Donnell, the theater’s executive artistic director, said of Rudin’s company.
Lyn Adams, executive director of the Oklahoma Children’s Theater, is similarly puzzled. “The truth is our audiences are high school and middle school kids, and I just don’t know how we would hurt anybody,” she said.
Nonetheless, Adams has canceled play, scheduled a production to take of place the in September at Oklahoma City University, saying the non- profit could not afford to risk the cost of losing a lawsuit.
“It was a very strong-arm kind of letter, shaking their finger at us and telling us we were doing a bad thing and would be sued if we went ahead with a production,” she said.
The theaters are caught in the middle of a dispute between the Lee estate and Dramatic Publishing Co., founded in 1885, which sells theaters the rights to put on the play.
The estate’s lawyers sent several letters to Dramatic over the last few weeks protesting its granting of rights to a number of theaters. The letters invoked a 1969 con- tract between Lee and Dramatic that blocks “Mockingbird” productions within 25 miles of cities that had a population of 150,000 or more in 1960 while a “first-class dramatic play” based on the novel is playing in New York or on tour.
In late February, with the dispute apparently unresolved, Rudin’s lawyer sent letters directly to the theaters warning them not to put on their shows.
In a statement, Rudin said: “We hate to ask anybody to cancel any production of a play anywhere, but the productions in question as licensed by DPC infringe on rights licensed to us by Harper Lee directly. The Sergel play can contractually continue to be performed under set guidelines as described in detail in its own agreement with Harper Lee — and as long as those guidelines are adhered to, we have no issue with the play having a long life.”
One copyright expert said he thought the producer was within his rights to demand the venues cancel the productions. “If they own the rights, they own the rights, and they can police them as much as they want,” said the lawyer, Jordan Greenberger, who is not affiliated with the case.