Tam Lin Goes To Court

this intriguing slice from his New York friend Miri Frankel, from the New York Times. It begins:

"Fairyland was inward turmoil. During a tech rehearsal for the Oct 2004 Off Broadway production of "Tam Lin" — a play close a clash betwixt mortal as well as immortal worlds — a real-life clash threatened to derail the show. Exactly what happened has become, literally, a federal case, as well as the sides concur on real few details. Did the playwright, Nancy McClernan, insist that the director's staging was incompetent? Did the director, Edward Einhorn, turn down to alteration it? Did the producer, Jonathan X. Flagg, hit some slice of furniture on the set? One thing's clear: the forenoon later on the tech rehearsal, later on 2 months of unpaid work, Mr Einhorn was fired.

... Ms McClernan as well as Mr Flagg figured the demo must move on. With the assist of an assistant (who eventually received the plan credit for direction), they supervised the remaining rehearsals, either largely restaging the play or retaining most of Mr Einhorn's contributions, depending on whose side you lot believe. In whatever case, "Tam Lin" opened, ran for its scheduled 10 performances as well as closed. But the drama was non over. Soon playwright as well as producer were embroiled inward a lawsuit ....

The principal involvement of that suit, ... scheduled for trial inward April, is non whether an creative mortal deserves to live on paid for function his employers deem unsatisfactory. What's actually at stake is something much larger, because Mr Einhorn claims inward his electrical load that his staging contributions to "Tam Lin" — contributions that his old collaborators tell they excised — found a copyrighted function of intellectual property, owned yesteryear him, as well as that the defendants must hence pay for infringing the copyright. When the lawsuit was filed inward Oct 2005, a novel run of the play was already inward rehearsal, this fourth dimension directed yesteryear Ms McClernan herself, who had ever intended to brand "Tam Lin" an annual Halloween event. Because Mr Einhorn says that fifty-fifty these novel performances represented unauthorized work of his work, the potential tab, based on the maximum allowable statutory harm of $150,000 per infringement, is right away upwards approximately $3 million, non including several other remedies he is requesting — along amongst his master copy $1,000 director's fee.

Under the circumstances, it seems questionable whether "Tam Lin" ... volition provide inward 2006. But many playwrights, including Ms McClernan, experience that a to a greater extent than unsafe threat is lurking inward Mr Einhorn's copyright claim: the kidnapping of their plays. As a result, the famously collaborative procedure of theater-making is right away shadowed yesteryear questions. Are directors engaged inward anything akin to the variety of authorship protected yesteryear copyright laws? If so, what's to halt them from demanding payment whenever a play they in ane lawsuit directed is revived? And what would that hateful to the costless catamenia of ideas inward an fine art degree that borrows heavily from all available sources?".

The article ends:

"The existent drama, though, is the ane beingness played out betwixt playwrights, who according to tradition were kings inward the theater, as well as directors, whose labor didn't be every bit such until semi-cultic figures similar Stanislavski advanced the role. Since then, playwrights conduct maintain looked on inward horror every bit people who used to live on glorified actors gradually usurped their power. The usurpers conduct maintain long since conquered Hollywood, where writers are positioned so far below directors on the totem pole, they're basically underground. Now they are threatening the playwrights' ancestral home, claiming, amongst some anxiety of their own, non only ability but besides paternity. Mr. Einhorn seat it this way: "A manager gives physical as well as visual life to a text. In many ways, it is similar to that of an illustrator. I function amongst illustrators on my books" — he is the author of 2 "Wizard of Oz" sequels — "and I conduct maintain had people comment, 'The mass is one-half what you've written as well as one-half the beautiful pictures.' They are sort out but interconnected. And fifty-fifty to a greater extent than so onstage, ane could non be without the other."

... The "Tam Lin" lawsuit may non create upwards one's heed the matter, but it volition in all probability inflame passions further. Mr. Shechtman is champing at the bit. "If it's genuinely a collaborative fine art form, as well as so why is it alone the author who participates inward the subsidiary rights that catamenia from a successful New York production?" he asked. "The appropriate resolution is to give fair credit to all the artists' contributions. One day, it may goal upwards that the author gets lxxx percent, the manager 10 percent, the master copy cast X as well as the designers Z. Because, at bottom, this is all close money."

No wonder playwrights are worried. Even the unremarkably unflappable Paul Rudnick is rethinking his options. "From right away on," he said, "I'm alone going to conduct maintain my plays directed yesteryear lawyers".

watches amongst excitement, non alone because of the legal as well as socio-cultural dimensions to this dispute but because he is a flake of a Tam Lin enthusiast himself. Merpel says, why shouldn't phase contributions live on protected? Under Britain law, are they non potentially protected every bit "dramatic works" nether s.3 of the Copyright, Designs as well as Patents Act 1988?

More on the legal dispute here
More on the Tam Lin legend here, here and here
Robert Burns' version of "Tam Lin" here
Classic rendition of "Tam Lin" yesteryear folk-rock band Fairport Convention as well as spine-tingling vocalizer Sandy Denny here (scroll downward to 'Listen to Samples', item 7)