I went to a live performance of “Chicago” today and I have a question.
When a theater buys the rights to put on a show, do they just get the scripts and have to come up with all the costumes, backdrops, sets, and music by themselves or can they order all that to be included and all they supply are the actors?
I know my daughters school did “Monty Pythons Holy Grail” and when they did it included several costumes. Also for local HS performances since so many do common shows like say “Wizard of Oz” the local theater shop has complete sets of costumes and props.
Incidentally the show used a set of electronic backboards that are like large flat screen tvs and can display all kinds of scenes. I’ve never seen them used at this theater before so I assume they were rented as part of the show package.
Generally the producers source whatever they need from a variety of sources. If they need performing rights for the play (they don’t need them, obviously, if it’s out of copyright, like Shakespeare) they’ll approach the licence-holders or their agents, pay a fee and get the rights. They’ll rent or build any scenery they need. They’ll make or rent costumes. They’ll hire a director and cast the production. They’ll rent a theatre. Etc, etc.
There are “touring productions” of big musicals, etc, which tour with the principal performers (sometimes all the performers), the costumes, the props, the scenery, etc, and simply rent a theatre, or do a profit-sharing arrangement with a theatre, in each town they visit. These days that tends to be only for very big productions.
It’s possible that the rights-holders for some works will only licence the work to a production company if the production company also takes costumes, scenery etc from them. But I don’t think that’s common.
Getting the rights for a copyrighted show is essentially just that, the rights. If it’s a professional production they have to pay a fee and box office royalties, if it’s an amateur production the fee will be much smaller (or waived) and royalties are not required (though they still must get written permission). The difference between amateur and professional is do any of the cast or crew get paid. If not, it’s amateur.
For small community or high school theaters a small box office fee may be charged, but it must all go back into the theater to offset general overhead, it can’t go into anybody’s pocket (cast, director etc.) Also, depending on the popularity of the play there may be minimum production standards that must be upheld. Obviously you can’t change any of the words or lyrics, but you also can’t ‘re-imagine’ the production in any way without explicit permission. IOW if you’re doing The Producers obviously there’s going to be scenes with swastikas in them, but if you’re doing Cats there can’t be…
I’m familiar with at least one theater that licensed Beauty and the Beast from Disney and it came with all the backgrounds, costumes, and props. I suspect that sort of licensing package isn’t terribly common but some companies do it.
My employer was doing a promotional event a few months ago for some HR initiative, and it was built around a “Wizard of Oz” theme, with people dressed as the four main characters wearing rented costumes. The one dressed as Dorothy was carrying a Scottie dog, as in the movie, and she told us that the dog was also rented.
It depends on the show and on how much the theater wants to spend.
I’ve done community theater for several years. In most of the shows we’ve done, the sets have been designed and built by someone at the theater. Costumes are either taken from stock (we have a large supply of various clothing from many historical periods), created by a volunteer costumer, or in some cases rented or borrowed from another local theater.
In the case of more specialized costumes, it’s sometimes necessary to rent them from a particular source. As it happens, my local theater is now in rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast (I am playing Cogsworth). Our costumer is renting a lot of the costumes, but also making some of them himself. We have a very good costumer, so we actually rent out some of the costumes that he’s made to other community theaters. It’s often a matter of how much budget you have to spend on costume rental, versus how much effort it would take to create the costumes yourself.
One of the biggest licensing agencies for musicals is Music Theatre International. If you follow that link to their website, you can look up any number of well-known shows, and see a complete listing of what you get when you buy the rights. Also note, on the left side of the page, the link to “Production Resources.” This will show you places where you can buy or rent things like the puppets for Avenue Q, the Audrey II prop for Little Shop of Horrors, show logos, sound effects CDs, and also the Community Marketplace, which offers costume and set rentals for lots of different shows, from various sources.
This pretty much describes my experience with community theater, at least some decades ago.
The theater group I worked with ca. 1970 even cast one actor as the lead in a show, not because he gave the best audition, but because he had a set of costumes for the show from a previous performance which saved us a lot of work.
I became aware of something you might not know exists. Let’s say you are a very small, but rich community, perhaps a small school in an affluent neighborhood. You want to put on a show, but your resources don’t permit fancy costumes and custom-written music. Your local talent simply isn’t that good (Think Waiting for Guffman). But…you can hire people who do this, and let you take the credit.
This people have canned shows ready to go. (Think Up With People). They will send you the music and scripts months in advance for you to rehearse, then show up two weeks before the final performance with all the costumes, sets, and maybe key musicians, who know the songs already.
With a few local musicians added, and some intensive rehearsals by the organizers, they can quickly whip an amateur production into shape. I’ve observed the organizers sitting in the front row, with communication devices, directing the live performance minute by minute. With their experience, a group that had no chance at an original, decent performance, can look like a Broadway musical.
And the audience has no clue. They love it. Shades of Music Man.
My High School theatre department had a large collection of costumes and props but often rented more specific ones. Some friends and I once drove 2 hours to pick up a rented Milky White on wheels, and later a really high-quality Audrey II.
I am going to give a shout out to the greatest This American Life episode, Fiasco in which the rental of stage flying apparatuses is discussed… but not in detail.
I’m volunteering (in a non acting capacity) at a local professional repertory production of Beauty and the Beast. The same theater did the show 10 years ago and basically dusted off their costumes, adding a few where needed, but cash strapped as they are they’re richer than most theaters and have their own costume shop and full time wardrobe manager.
There are costume companies that specifically exist to supply community theater and they’ll usually have all the costumes needed for frequently done pieces. If you’re doing Fiddler on the Roof just tell them “Tevye has a 16” collar and a 38" chest and Golde’s a size 16 and Lazar Wolf is a big ol’ boy with a 50" waist" and they’ll hook you up, because they’ve got Tevye and Golde and Lazar in any number of sizes. Tell them you’re doing Music Man and they’ll have a specific Howard Hill suit as well as some generic turn-of-the century clothing that they also loaned to productions of My Fair Lady and The Importance of Being Earnest, though for My Fair Lady there are specific gowns for Eliza and the Ascot crowd as well. This is why if you see several productions of 1776 their John Adams may be a different size in each but he’ll be wearing the same basic outfit- color and material and everything- they all came from the same supplier.
A good friend of mine is a costumer and has worked in several professional companies and it’s interesting the differences between the costumes of the lead and the chorus. He assigns up to four categories of costume, with one being extremely detailed costumes that are for the lead who’s going to be onstage a lot and that if you were to shake hands with the person would look perfectly natural to 4 being for a spear carrier who’s going to walk across the stage for 30 seconds and who nobody’s going to see up close or long enough to know that it’s velcrow and cheap synthetic fabric. 2 and 3 are somewhere in the middle, 2 being good enough for the 10 foot rule (i.e. looks good enough at 10 feet away) and 3 being “we’ll put them in the back”.
