Urinetown's Broadway Creators Claim Other Theaters Copied Their Work

Five members of the creative team behind the Broadway production of Urinetown are charging that productions of the show in Chicago and Akron, Ohio, have copied their work without permission, according to The New York Times. Among those signing a letter of complaint are director John Rando and choreographer John Carrafa.

The Broadway creators' complaints come in the wake of choreographer Brian Loeffler's recent win of a 2006 Joseph Jefferson Award for his work on a production of Urinetown at Chicago's Mercury Theater. The production was nominated for a total of seven Jeff Awards. Loeffler also choreographed a production at the Carousel Dinner Theater in Akron, the other production cited in the Broadway creators' letter.

According to the Times, the letter demands that Loeffler formally return any awards he has won for his work on the show and that the creative teams from both the Chicago and Akron productions provide a detailed accounting of their revenues, from which "an appropriate license fee and damages" would be determined. If the demands are not met, the Broadway creators say they will seek damages in court.

Copyright protection for elements beyond a show's script and music continue to be an ambiguous area of the law. Two previous high-profile cases involving Broadway productions were summed up in a New York Times piece earlier this year. The first involved a Chicago theater that presented a 1994 production of The Most Happy Fella by director Gary Griffin The Color Purple using rented sets from the late Gerald Gutierrez's 1992 Lincoln Center Theater production. Gutierrez sued, saying the Chicago production used so many details of his work, including rearranged scenes and dialogue, that it amounted to plagiarism. The suit was settled before trial and Gutierrez was paid an undisclosed sum.

The second case involved a 1996 production of Love! Valour! Compassion! in Boca Raton, Florida, that director Joe Mantello claimed copied 95 percent of his original Broadway staging. He asked the director, Michael Hall, and theater to acknowledge his work and pay him a nominal fee. When they refused; he filed a lawsuit. Before trial, the parties settled for $7,000, which Mantello donated to his union. Both Gutierrez and Mantello later copyrighted annotated scripts that recorded in detail their directorial contributions.