I understand why you would think that, but it really is pretty surprising. The rules in theater are pretty clear and easy to follow with 100+ years of precident. You don’t become a college professor / director, even at a small college, unless you have been around the block a few times. She knew how to do this and had likely done it a lot before, and if she hadn’t there were people in her department who had.
The small public high school I taught at, producing an equally obscure play, managed to get everything done correctly, and the department faculty was me and my supervisor.
I agree the students are the ones being unfairly punished. But I disagree that Suh is to blame. The director set them up to fail right from the start.
So it’s not clear what agreement did/did not exist. However, if you send me a contract, I send you a check, and you cash that check, then that’s a legally binding contract. The fact that the contract is not “fully executed”, whatever that means, is irrelevant.
And I’d add that the onus is on Suh and Suh’s agent here. If you have an unusual and extreme stance then it’s beholden to you to clearly communicate that. Something it doesn’t sound like they ever did.
To you perhaps, but not to the courts. Cashing the check does not count as accepting the contract. Signing the contract counts as accepting the contract.
Finding myself in full agreement with Grumman is rare. However, under these very specific circumstances (i.e., casting of a visual production) I do not think that requiring actors of a particular ethnicity is racist or discriminatory.
That is an oversimplification. Whether acceptance of payment constitutes an acceptance sufficient to create a binding obligation depends on the law of the jurisdiction, the nature of the contract, and its terms.
ETA: Inner Stickler’s rebuttal is also an oversimplification.
I agree that it is an oversimplification and I’d amend my statement to say “probably legally binding”. The point is relying on the fact that there wasn’t a “fully executed contract” is very thin. There certainly was some sort of agreement and Suh or his agent had ample time to raise their objections. They apparently never did until two weeks before the play was scheduled to start.
When it comes to procuring rights for play performances which is the type of contract under discussion in this thread, my oversimplification reflects reality more accurately than Treis’s. Checks are often sent before the agreement is finalized and if the agreement falls through for some reason, the agent simply returns the money. For the school to assume that because their check was cashed, they had carte blanche to change the play is unusual to say the least.
The school never finalized the license agreement with Suh, so no, they had no legal right to perform the play regardless of Suh’s wishes or objections. It sucks and I feel for the actors but the school and the director are at fault. No one else.
What is the “general ethnicity” and where is it defined?
Many northern Indians, e.g., are light-skinned and would be classed as Caucasian, at least according to some schemes. Most southern Indians have darker skin. Are they equally acceptable to Suh, or do you have to be “this dark” to qualify? How about somebody who is racially Anglo-Indian but was raised in a traditional Hindu household? How about that same Anglo-Indian when raised in a stereotypically English household?
When the Magic Theatre in San Francisco staged Jesus in India, Jomar Tagatac was apparently sufficiently ethnic to satisfy Suh, but Tagatac is a Filipino surname, and I know of no definition of South Asia that includes the Philippines.
The only agreement that certainly existed was that the school was allowed to perform the play in a classroom. It is certainly a matter of dispute whether any public performance agreement existed.
So, no the director did not “forget”. She answered the question at the time with the information she had. Suh had nearly a year to say “don’t do this play if you cast white actors in these roles”. He never did. He had the opportunity to be involved with the production. He declined. He had an opportunity to find a reasonable solution to the problem. He didn’t want to. All of that makes him a total asshole.
I do not have any special knowledge of Suh’s views on this matter or what it might say in the performance license for this play. I was responding to your claim that he would be fine with actors of any non-white race – African, Native American, etc. – playing his Indian characters when this is not what he said in what AFAIK is his only public statement on the subject.
It sounds like there was plenty of communication between the university and plenty of opportunity for Suh to communicate his no whites policy. The fact that he and/or his agent didn’t rests solely on Suh and his agent.
As for the licensing aspect, the university received a contract, signed it, sent payment, and that payment was received. From a moral standpoint, they did everything correct. From a legal aspect, they have an almost air tight case. The contract constitutes an offer, the university signing it counts as acceptance, and the check was cashed, so the consideration requirement is met.
So he told her, “Sure, go ahead and use it in the classroom, but if you want to perform it publicly, you need to honor the ethnicity of the characters.” He then heard nothing for 5 months, only to discover that she’d gone ahead a put together a public performance that he knew nothing about and was contrary to his wishes.
No, he absolutely did not say that. He, and I quote, “asked specifically whether they would be able to honor the general ethnicity of the characters”. Asking if you can do something is totally different from telling someone they have to do something. Again, this situation could have easily been avoided:
Suh: Can you honor the ethnicity of the characters?
Michel: We haven’t done casting yet.
Suh: Ok, please be aware that these characters can’t be white.
Situation avoided. The fact that Suh did not express his wishes, despite ample opportunity, until just before performance puts the responsibility for the situation entirely on him.
It absolutely looks like she’s trying to pull shenanigans. The school has a theater department. They produce several shows/year and are quite familiar with the process of obtaining rights and making sure that all of the parts of the contract are met.
If it were a brand new company putting on a show for the very first time that had never dealt with rightsholders before, there might be an excuse. But she knew better and the institution definitely knew better. (Junior highs and high schools know better; a college level program that’s purporting to put theater professionals out in the world doesn’t have a leg to stand on.) She was hoping not to get caught and/or thinking that if she got far enough into the process, the playwright might change his mind and she’d get away with it.
I am saying that the many posters/internet people blaming Clarion are incorrect. Clarion made a good faith effort to respect Suh’s wishes. They signed and a contract and paid him. They received his approval to modify it to a musical and he approved the composer. They invited him to participate in the production, and he declined. I can’t find any fault with their behavior.
Whether or not Suh had the legal right to stop the production is immaterial. The point is that he is an asshole because he waited until just before the performance started to raise his objections. He is a total asshole because his objection is because some actors have the wrong color skin. He is a complete asshole because he rejected reasonable solutions to the situation. Preferring instead to throw away a great deal of other people’s efforts.
The point is that he’s an asshole. I don’t care if he is an asshole acting within his legal rights or outside his legal rights.