For 11-year-old Olivia Mongelli, the bad news came during rehearsal. «Everyone onstage was just in shock,» the Ohio girl, cast as Scout in the
For 11-year-old Olivia Mongelli, the bad news came during rehearsal.
«Everyone onstage was just in shock,» the Ohio girl, cast as Scout in the dramatic production of the classic Harper Lee novel, toldthe New York Times. «I just sat there for a second and said, ‘Is this a joke’?»
From Massachusetts to Utah, small community theater productions of «To Kill a Mockingbird» are being shut down under threat of a lawsuit by the producer of the new Broadway production.
It doesn’t matter that the new version, penned by Aaron Sorkin, is completely different from the Christopher Sergel play that’s been performed by high school students and community theater actors for decades. Nor does it matter that the community theaters paid a licensing fee of at least $100 dollars per performance to the Dramatic Publishing Company, which owns the rights to the earlier version of the play.
What matters, lawyers for Broadway producer Scott Rudin say, is that according to the contract between Dramatic and the Harper Lee estate, most amateur performances can’t proceed now that a new version of the story is on Broadway.
That 1969 contract, according to the Times, blocks Mockingbird performances 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 book is playing in New York or on tour.
«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,» Rudin said in a statement.
