May 12-18, 2005

art

Greased, Frightening

Brat and Tapestry Theatre's summer nights just got a lot colder, thanks to a cease-and-desist order.

by Brian Howard

"The bottom line is, about two hours ago we got a call from Sam French, who wants to shut down the production," spits Kelly Jennings, co-artistic director of Tapestry Theatre, into her cell phone.

It's a Thursday afternoon, just hours before the last scheduled dress rehearsal for an all-female production of Grease, a joint effort between her company and Madi Distefano's Brat Productions. Now the show and its three-week run at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center are very much in jeopardy.

Samuel French, Inc. is the New York-based play publisher and author representative in charge of the licensing arrangements for thousands of theatrical titles. Tapestry and Brat are small companies known for pushing artistic boundaries.

When Tapestry and Brat secured the licensing to perform Grease, they signed a contract. "No changes, interpolations or deletions in book, lyrics or music shall be made in this play for the purpose of your play," reads Distefano from the document. This is normally so much boilerplate garble. And despite Tapestry/Brat's decision to frame their version of Grease as if it were being performed at an all-girl's high school, with women playing all roles (the men's roles were to be played as men), the producers figured that since they were not changing a line of the script, they were in the clear.

Apparently not.

According to Distefano, French and, ostensibly, Jim Jacobs, the surviving of Grease's two authors (Warren Casey died in 1988), objected to the all-female casting and sent Tapestry/Brat an order to cease and desist. Calls to French were directed to Jacobs' attorney, Ron Taft, who had not responded by press time.

According to Distefano, during her initial contact with Samuel French, the lawyer "kept saying to me, "Danny Zucco is a boy. How much clearer do we have to be than that?'"

"My response to that is that he's also white and Italian and he's not handicapped. And he's probably brunette," she says.

In the Tapestry/Brat production, the Zucco role was to be played by Lee Etzold, one of the more celebrated actresses on Philly stages. Her image, bicep exposed while slicking back her hair, graces the promotional material, which isn't shy about the production's premise. Etzold certainly looks the part.

"Where do you draw the line?" asks Distefano. "An artist should be able to play any role."

It sounds right — this being the 21st century and all, and a blue state besides — and to say nothing of the countless reinterpretations/recastings/resettings of Shakespeare anyone with even a passing interest in theater has been subjected to in their lifetime. But while The Bard's work is now part of the public domain, the work of more recent playwrights is subject to copyright laws that grant them or their estates control over how their work is presented. Samuel Beckett and Sam Shepard are among noted playwrights who have attempted to have gender-flipped castings of their work stopped. The estate of George Gershwin refuses to grant licensing rights for Porgy and Bess to any but all-African-American casts.

As backward as it sounds — after all, one might argue that it's daring re-imaginings like this that reveal undiscovered depths within a script — there's quite a bit of precedent, though no actual case law, backing up the playwright's right to cry foul.

According to Robert Jarvis, co-author of Theater Law: Cases and Materials and a law professor at Ft. Lauderdale's Nova Southeastern University, in the U.S., authors are afforded "moral rights," among these are the "right of integrity," which essentially means, "If I create a work, you don't have the right to change it, because I gave birth to it," Jarvis says.

"These things never go to court," he continues. "One side or the other sits there and says we don't have the money" to fight.

Should Tapestry/Brat throw in the towel, figures James Haskins, executive director of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, it would be a shame. "I personally saw a production of Grease in 1992 in Seattle that was cross-gender cast across the board. Danny was a woman, all the pink ladies were men, Kenickie was a woman." The theater company, Alice B. Theater, received a cease-and-desist order from Samuel French but went ahead with its production. "It had a gay and lesbian framing device," recalls Haskins of the production. "By casting it that way, it seemed to reinforce the innocence of the piece. And I think that's ultimately what's at stake here, whether the integrity of the original piece is being compromised."

That may be something Philadelphia's theater community will never find out. With no money in the ol' legal defense fund and likely no desire to permanently sour their relationship with Samuel French, Tapestry/Brat are preparing an all-new musical, Grease and Desist. They'll continue to negotiate with Jacobs' attorney to find a way to go forward with their original vision of Grease as performed by an all-girls' high school. But for now, "We're just trying to produce a musical," says Distefano. "We could have kept going and put the onus on them to come and shut us down. They'd have to prove we were in violation of our contract. We were just performing Grease word-for-word as it's written. Our contract didn't say anything about the gender of the actors." At some point after Tapestry/Brat signed their contract, Distefano says language was added to the standard contract for Grease that stipulates that men should play men.

Distefano describes Grease and Desist as hilarious, listing some of the musical numbers the companies have whipped up over a weekend: "You're A Little Prissy Bitch," "Lickety Split," "Quasi Modo," and "What Must I Do?" a "country-Western lament about pee." Grease and Desist "isn't an angry tirade," she insists. "Success is the best revenge."

Pending Tapestry/Brat's negotiations with Jacobs' attorneys, they'll be debuting one of two musicals tonight at 7 p.m.