Why I Love THE PRODUCERS and why you should, too

I have come to understand that Mel Brooks wrote THE PRODUCERS because, as a Jew and a World War II veteran, he hated the Nazis. Brooks figures the best way to beat the Nazis now, decades after the collapse of the Third Reich, is to make fun of them. He intends in The Producers to make Nazis appear ridiculous as that is how he sees them.

Brooks’ 1968 movie was a moderate success in its time but has come to be known as a comedy classic thanks to Brooks’ heavy satire and the seminel performances of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. There is no question the The Producers in 1968 was the darkest of dark comedies . . . what with the Holocaust in the living memory of just about anyone who might have seen the film in its original release. Even now the film seems a little on the edgy side.

Thirty years later the 2001 Broadway musical was transformed into farce. It is excellent fodder for a fantastically funny musical comedy even with its jarring images of dancing storm troopers as well as a very fey Adolph Hitler. In some ways, THE PRODUCERS you might see in our theatre is Mel Brooks’ greatest hits. He borrows heavily from his movies and is humor and world view well represented throughout the play. It could be a fun game to play: keeping score of the the lines and jokes from other Mel Brooks' movies.

Ultimately, the Producers is not about the Nazis who are so present in the story-telling. Instead, THE PRODUCERS is about the redemptive quality of true friendship. When the play is over, both Max and Leo are better people for having become friends. That’s a lesson we can all learn.

It's a Monster of a Show!

THE PRODUCERS is really kicking our butt.

I don't remember the specifics but what I do remember is not pretty. As I recall, when THE PRODUCERS was in its first previews in New York, some scence chages were taking up to 25 minutes. We have been told tht the running time was somewhere north of 5 hours. That's how hard this show can be on a stage crew.

We are no where near the 5 hour mark on our show -- it should be around 2 and half hours instead. We have also cut design elements that obviously appeared on Broadway. We have cut other elements we planned to include but ran out of time to create for our show. We are working very hard to get things finished in time for the first performacne on thursday, but, as they say, the paint might still be wet.

Who Doesn't Like Spaghetti?

No one, I hope.

Because the Firestone High School Stage Parents Association will hold a Special Spaghetti Dinner from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 7, 2009. The dinner is open to all and is priced so that everyone can afford it.

This affordable and tasty spaghetti dinner will be held in the school's cafeteria between the matinee and evening performances of school's annual musical, THE PRODUCERS. A delicious dinner featuring a home-made red sauce complete with salad and bread is available along with dessert. will be served at a reasonable price from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. A single dinner is only $6.00. A couple eats for just $10.00. A family of four can have dinner for as little as $20.00.

Tickets to the Spaghetti Dinner can be purchased in the school's commons from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on all school days. Pre-sale tickets to THE PRODUCERS can also be purchased during that time. Tickets for both the dinner and the performances will be available at the door on the evening of the event.

Patrons from both the 2:30 p.m. and the 7:30 p.m. performances of THE PRODUCERS are invited to eat a delicious dinner with us either before or after their show.

Dinner-only patrons are welcome to attend.

Meet the Press

There is a nice feature on THE PRODUCERS in today's issue of the West Side Leader. It is the kindof attentionthat definitely helps to sell tickets and I am glad that the Leader is still willing to help out the poor HS shows when they need it the most.

Kathleen Folkerth came by last week and spent a few minutes with me and some of my students. Brian Jackson (Max), Andrew White (Leo) and Rosilyn Jentner were quoted andthere is a funny picture of Brian and Andrew that I took on our stage.

You can read the article here.

Who Gave You the Right?!?

In our case it was Musical Theatre International -- or M-T-I as it is called "in the biz."

MTI administers the performance rights for THE PRODUCERS so if you want to present the show at your theatre you need to call them . . . and you better have your checkbook ready because it is not cheap. I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of the expense because it is different for everybody based on how big your house is and how expensive your tickets are. It also matters if you are a professional theatre, an amatuer theatre, or an educational theatre. Our 780 seats add up fast so our bill gets to be pretty huge even though we are a little educational theatre program that honestly does not attract a very big audience. -- at least not more than 700 per night!

Our bill for performance rights to THE PRODUCERS is kind of complicated. You have to pay royalties per performance and this money that goes to the authors -- in our case mostly to Mel Brooks and a little, I assume, to the estate of Thomas Meehan. We also pay rental because all the material has to be returned to the company. A two-month rental is standard and we need three so that's extra. We also require three conductor's scores (when two is standard) so that even more. We also pay a security deposit that may or may not be returned to us depending on whether or not we return the books in a timely fashion and in good condition.

We pay some incidental rights expenses, too, for THE PRODUCERS. We paid extra for a stage maangers script so that there wre no illegal photocopies. We also paid for a director's script and a choreographers guide that includes all of Susan Stroman's dance notations and blocking for the actors. This is the first time I have seen any of these three items available from the publishers and they have definitely come in handy.

If you are going to do the THE PRODUCERS you must pay for it . . . just like almost every other show. If you don't , you are stealing money from the authors and I have a problem with that. I talk often to my students about the concept of "intellectual property" becasue one day they will write a play and they deserve to be paid when some produces it on their stage. So we happily pay MTI for the performance rights and put on our show.

Sometimes people put on shows without the performance rights and I find this practice very troubling. Some people figure "What's the harm?" or "Who's to know?" However, someone is trying to make money off of this product and the whole point is for you to lease the rights to put on your show so that they can make a little money on it.

You might think that a show like PETER PAN, for instance, is so old that it has fallen into the public domain already and that you don't have to ask for permisison to put it on. In this case, you would be very wrong. The rights to PETER PAN in England have expired and therefore are in the public domain but here in the States the copyright is not set to expire until 2024 or something like that. The peformance rights to the musical version of PETER PAN --probably the most famous verion-- are held by Samuel French, Inc, and you should definitely contact them if you intend to put on the show that features the famous songs by Carolyn Leigh Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. If not, you are in violation of copyright law and may very well be thrown into a copyright infringment lawsuit and that might cost you a lot of money.

Besides, I understand that JM Barrie bequeethed the rights to PETER PAN to a children's hospital in England. So when you don't pay your royalties for PETER PAN, some little kid might not get his medicine that day -- or worse. Let that sit in your conscience for a while.

When it comes to PETER PAN you might also step on some Walt Disney toes. Their very popular film version is subject to its own copywright and if your show too closely resembles theirs in costumes, for instance, the long arm of Disney might be reaching out to you. Be careful about that big red costume you wrap Captain Hook into, you never know who is interested. Disney is very serious about protecting their intellectual property and certainly do not want you infringing on their own ability to make money off of it.

When it comes to performance rights I always figure it is better to be safe than sorry. Paying for royalties is part of the cost of doing business. If you can't afford to pay royalties you probably can't afford to do the show.

Playing at Making Movies

TCM was showing the 1968 version of the THE PRODUCERS this morning. I caught the last 30 minutes as I was making my lunch. I had not seen it for a couple of decades so it was good to remind myself.


I tell students all the time not to spend too much time looking at the movie version of whatever play we are doing. With THE PRODUCERS, of course, there are two to choose from. The first was basically a non-musical with a few motivated songs like "Springtime for Hitler." The second was full-on musical -- a very nearly step-by-step filming of the Broadway play directed by Susan Stroman who directed and choreographed the stage version, too.


There is a danger in becoming to familiar with a movie version of any play. We might in this case spend too much time making things look like and sound like the movie. Not only is this not especially creative for actor or director, it ignores the fact that theatre and film are two very different media with significant differences in approach and presentation.



When we first announced THE PRODUCERS as our 2009 musical, I was surprised and confused by the question: "Which one are we doing?" At first I did not understand why the question was even asked; there is only one musical version of THE PRODUCERS. I eventually figured out that these students had gone to the library or the video store and asked for a copy of THE PRODUCERS and were asked the same question: which one?


The 1968 film version is the source material for the 2001 Broadway musical. Much of this film, which features Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, appears very nearly in whole cloth in the stage play. If you are only familiar with the classic version THE PRODUCERS, you will quickly recognize the characters and the story when watching our play. It is easy to tell that the film has been adapted for the stage. Some characters, like Ulla, have had their parts expanded and other elements, like blowing up the theatre, have been excised for obvious reasons.


If you are familiar with the 2005 film version, though, you might have few questions. While the story stays the virtually same and all the characters are clearly represented in tne movie, some of the funnier punchlines are replaced with less funny ones I assume were improvised on the set. I mostly am disappointed by these alterations but my greatest disappointment with the modern movie is that they did not seem to make an effort to turn it into a movie musical the way they did with CHICAGO or DREAMGIRLS, for instance. There appears to be no effort made to rethink the play for the screen. It is not an adaptation as much as a re-creation.


Many scenes appear to have a static camera set up at the edge of thestage and had the actors replicate their stage peroformances. Maybe this is why we find the performances of Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman somewhat more interesting than those of even Nathan Lane and Mathew Broderick. Neither Ferrell nor Thurman appeared on stage and therefore must have approached their roles as something new. I find both Lane and Broderick to be gifted comedians and respect their ability to easily move from stage to screen and back again, but their performances in THE PRODUCERS movie leave me wanting. I can only assume that this is due to the directing. Susan Stroman had never directed a movie before . . . and maybe she won't again if this is to be the result. Her film is too much like a play and not enough like a movie.

I can't help but wonder how THE PRODUCERS movie might have been different if Mel Brooks had directed it himself.

Right on the Button

Selling a high school musical gets harder and harder. Even inside the school.

For us, the days that everyone --staff and students-- comes to see the annual school musical are long gone. A large part of our student population has no theatre tradition so not only are they not coming to see our productions, they don't even know anything about it.

I am not sure what to say about the staff. Some are very loyal and gracious attending each production with diligence . . . and sometimes with their family. We love them. Others we never see. Probably never see them at any school activities. They teach, cash the check, and go home. I find them bewildering. I wish they would come back once in a while to see our little plays.

I firmly believe that theatre-lovers will come to see our production of THE PRODUCERS if we can just find a way to let them know we are doing it. It is a very popular show with high name recognition. Even if you don't know the musical, you might be familiar with the 1968 movie that featured Zero Mostel. We just have got to tell people --all people-- that we are presenting THE PRODUCERS and hope that for seven bucks most people will recognize it as the entertainment bargain it really is.

We are the first theatre of any kind in this area to present our own production of THE PRODUCERS and we have taken that responsibility very seriously. We are trying very hard to do the material justice and to support he play with the appropriate technical elements. I really do think the show is going to be simply fantastic. It sounds as good as any show we have done in recent years -- maybe better. And Lord knows we have built enough scenery to clog most stages including ours.

We are being a little more aggressive with our marketing/promotion. We embellished our press list to include more members of the media (now up to 70 or so), we got our newlsetter out early to nearly 1200 addresses, have posted the dates on every online calendar we can think of, and I have made personal appeals to the local print media --what little is left-- to bless us with a feature article. I think one might.

More to the point, I have printed our yard signs again. This time they are two-sided and a lovely red color to stand out agasint the dreary late winter weather. More than eighty signs are out there dotting the neighborhoods in west Akron. I saw a few of them myself earlier today. I still need to put them around the school and hope to do so tomorrow. I will still have a few left if anyone needs one for their yard.

I spent the better part of three hours tonight making buttons with our fabulous new button maker. I made around 100 of the little diamonds that I hope to start SELLING to the cast and crew and orchestra tomorrow. There are six different button designs that feature lines from the play as well as the date and place info. Some kids said they wanted one of each. I am happy to oblige. I can make more. The package comes with materials to make 250. If I have to make them all, my hands will be sore but my heart will be late.

Maybe my hands will be sore again later when I have to count the box office receipts. I hope so because someone has to pay for this lumber and all these costumes.

And who could forget the pigeon puppets? Not me. I'll never forget the pigeons. You won't, either, if you come see THE PRODUCERS at Firestone High School.