News from the United Kingdom

Noises off: the little horrors of copyright

In this week's bloggers' roundup: is copyright cramping creativity? And what's with all the artistic manifestos?

Nothing broken ... Sheridan Smith and Paul Keating in a legitimate production of Little Shop of Horrors at Menier Chocolate Factory. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Let's turn first of all to the tricky issue of copyright. Nick Olivero of Boxcar theatre recently got his fingers burnt when he directed a production of Little Shop of Horrors. As part of the creative process, he incorporated elements from both film versions of the show, and he also used text from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and dialogue that he had written himself. As he describes in this open letter to the theatrical community, the excellent reviews the show received were not enough to stop the licensing agency for Little Shop forcing him to cancel the run once they had found out what was going on. He accepts that his actions broke the licensing agreement and that they therefore had the right to shut his show down. But this leads him on to ask exactly where the line should be drawn, from an artistic point of view, when it comes to adapting existing work. He asks: "If 'we' can collectively agree that William Shakespeare was the greatest playwright of all time, yet every producer, director, actor, and playwright deems it appropriate to cut and revise his work, then who is to say that any other writer shouldn't be edited as well?"

This is an issue that is of great interest to Isaac Butler. In terms of the specific example of Boxcar's show he has little sympathy with them for what happened – as he puts it: "This isn't a new work with a new title built out of borrowed building blocks, this is a production that billed itself as Little Shop of Horrors and wasn't." But from a more general point of view, he does think that we need to find ways of "loosening and restructuring (without getting rid of) copyright law". The current system, he argues, "discourages creativity and innovation (at least in the arts) by turning our creative work into 'property' to be protected, forever, if possible." Rather, he says, we should be trying to develop "two systems of permissions, a loose one for art and a tight one for advertising". This would allow creative artists to exploit extant work for artistic purposes while still preventing commercial operators from unfairly profiting from the work of others. It's a nifty idea – and one that might allow artists to flourish creatively and financially.

Noises off also finds its eye caught by the fact that various artists have been setting out their views on what theatre should be. Take this manifesto by Diana Damian, for instance. She's concerned by the isolationist nature of the UK's theatrical culture, and says that the UK is becoming increasingly "insular, introducing imaginary borders, immigration caps, false illusions of independence and cultural supremacy". She felt this particularly acutely when, at a recent conference that she took part in, which brought together theatremakers from all over Europe, she discovered that "The most disappointing aspect of the three-day session is also the most embarrassing. My colleagues are almost as literate about our local performance culture as I am, but I know little of theirs." She goes on to argue that it is the responsibility of theatres and festivals to actively foster this kind of interchange, and suggests that the BAC's One-on-One festival is a good example of how this can be done. She concludes: "Cultural context and shared meaning are crucial tools to break through the uncertainty of the current socio-political landscape." Perhaps by fostering collaboration and diversity in our artistic output, we can help bring about change at a political level.

Another manifesto comes from the American theatremaker Richard Montoya. A founder member of the radical theatre group Culture Clash, his artistic statement takes a poetic form that bears a passing resemblance to Allen Ginsberg's remarkable poem Howl. It's a complex piece of writing which takes some unpacking, but one of the key points can be found when he says:

"Whatever my theater is it will have grace in a violent world
and worlds that spin about us.
My political theater is an act of love. My Chicano specificity
is universal – my mind matured with a world view void
of the dead end road of identity politics. I am interested in you.
Academic, anarchist, artistic director, actor, writer,
provocateur, Hollywood refusnik!"

The idea of finding "grace in a violent world" is a rather beautiful one. Maybe it's something that all art should be aiming for.