Prepare Ye the Way of la Meme Chose

[ceebeegee]

God, I am SO SICK of productions of Godspell with the same old tired trope of male Jesus and Judas. The show is about the Gospel of St. Matthew with mixed genders apostles dressed as clowns, invoking every current pop reference out there--you'd think SOMEONE besides me would've thought of actually casting a woman as something other than adoring groupie. BORING.

Comments

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

See my post above--if you consider it that essential, then have it written into the rights. But I don't agree that's a default assumption--again, especially with a play like Godspell.

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

From the MTI website, which handles Godspell's rights: When you are granted a performance license, by law the show you license must be performed "as is." You should not make any changes unless you have obtained prior written permission from us to do so. Otherwise, any changes violate the authors' rights under federal copyright law. Contact us - it's always safest to ask."

While the meaning of "as is" can be debated I see no harm in simply checking if casting against race and/or gender types is acceptable to the author. After all, if I'm presenting someone else's creation I wouldn't want to risk doing something he or she would disapprove of.

Godspell is a bit of a different matter, however, since Tebelak has been pretty open about encouraging companies to improvise and make changes in his book pretty much at will. There may even be note about that in the text. However, I don't know if Schwartz allows the same freedom with his score.