Peter D. Kramer

pkramer@lohud.com

They’re putting on a show, but mum’s the word.

Eleven high-school musicals open in Westchester this week, but only eight of them can officially advertise the name of their show outside their towns or villages. For the other three — and a fourth school later this season — show-licensing contracts limit their ability to crow about their show to anyone but their neighbors.

Really.

This weekend, Pleasantville is staging "Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel” (with back-to-back Metro-winner James McCarthy as carnival barker Billy Bigelow) and Briarcliff and Kennedy Catholic present “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.” In April, Walter Panas will stage “The Addams Family.”

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All of these productions come with strict advertising restrictions, making some directors nervous. It comes down to interpretation: Some, like Pleasantville and Briarcliff, impose strict controls on how they promote the show; others, such as Kennedy Catholic, welcome media coverage, but abide by the advertising limits.

Briarcliff’s producer-director Ian Driver had to get creative with his poster.

“We made two versions. One for inside the village that uses the 'Cinderella' title and one outside of village that uses just the tagline 'Just be home by midnight' with a picture of a girl in a ball gown standing in the woods.”

There’s fear at work here. Run afoul of a licensing group — such as the powerful R&H Theatricals or Theatrical Rights Worldwide — and they could yank your license and cancel your show.

And nobody wants that.

Here’s how it works: When any professional or amateur theater wants to stage, say, “Les Miserables,” they apply for a license, spelling out the number of performances, number of seats, and ticket prices. Then, the rights-granters (in the case of “Les Miz,” Music Theater International) sets a price for the license and sends a contract to be signed. Bronxville paid about $6,000 for the right to stage “Les Miz” this weekend.

Contracts require the director adhere to the script, stipulate the size of the author’s name on the poster, and so on. If there’s a national tour (as with “Cinderella”) or a professional theater has a contract or plans a future production (as with “The Addams Family”), there may be ad restrictions.

The restrictions generally say that producers can't advertise their productions in a way that might confuse their show with an upcoming professional production. Even though it will clearly say "Briarcliff High School" on the posters, the rights holders fear the dilution of their brand and confusion in the marketplace.

There are no surprises here; producers sign on the dotted line understanding the limitations.

Dana Siegel, vice president of marketing and business development at Rodgers & Hammerstein, said that while the company reserves the right to pull a license, every effort is made to avoid it.

"We want all of our shows to be as open to schools as possible and that is why sometimes an ad restriction comes in," Siegel said. "An ad restriction is our way of being able to say 'yes' when we might otherwise have to say 'no.'"

Siegel said the goal is to let amateurs be successful while ensuring that "the professional production is not encumbered or cannibalized by other ticket sales."

Howard Sherman, director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School of Drama and a go-to blogger on theater, has followed controversial cases where school administrators have objected to directors’ choices for musicals and have canceled productions. But he said he has never heard of a license being pulled over advertising or promotion.

He also doesn’t think high schools get in the way of the pros.

“I’ve never fully understood the rational of restricting rights for high school shows,” Sherman said. “Local school productions, it seems to me, create more of an audience for the material.”

To paraphrase Cinderella's stepsisters, why would a theater want a show like that, a show that's ad-restricted?

Said Briarcliff's Ian Driver: “This is the first time I've taken on a restricted show but I thought it was worth the risk this year. Our priority this year was to build a sense of community through the production and to build more awareness for the program throughout the district as well as the high school. ‘Cinderella’ provided a perfect vehicle for that.”

Ticket saleshelp to fund a theater program, and Driver decided that having an iconic show — even one they couldn’t advertise by name beyond the Briarcliff boundaries — would still deliver an audience.

So he gulped, signed the contract and held his breath, wondering, he said: “Will people recognize the correct show title when they reserve tickets online? Will the posters, that have been crafted not to mention the title, still lead the viewer to the right understanding of the title? Will we sell enough tickets to match the outlay for a lush show if our advertising is restricted?”

Answers to those questions will be revealed this weekend.

Christina Ritter, R&H Theatricals director of amateur rights, said it doesn’t really matter that the Cinderella in the national tour is finding her prince in Arkansas this weekend.

“If there’s a tour out, we protect around the tour,” she said. “Whether they’re going to be coming there now or six months from now. Any organization that wants to do the show, we’re going to protect the tour. Every single ‘Cinderella’ request that comes in is given an ad restriction.”

If "Carousel" and "Cinderella" come with restrictions, R&H's Siegel says her company is breaking new ground with another title.

"We've released 'School of Rock' to performances 18 and under, and it just opened on Broadway," she said. "That's the first time it's ever been done. That's an extreme scenario."

Sometimes, producers sign ad-restricted contracts to give the audience something new.

“If I see one more production of ‘Shrek,’” one producer told me, “I’m going to lose my mind.”

Erin Betman, a licensing representative for Theatrical Rights Worldwide, which granted rights to "The Addams Family" at Panas, said: “All of these amateur groups nearby, they’re allowed to do the show, however they’re not allowed to announce or advertise their show until after the pro group closes.”

“The only people who are allowed to know even the title of the show that they’re doing until after the pro group closes would be anyone directly related to the show. That would be cast and crew,” she said.

I read that quote back to her. She confirmed it. Just the cast and crew.

Tim Reid, drama teacher at Clarkstown High School North, was dumbfounded to hear that.

“How on earth are you supposed to do a show without letting anybody know about it?" he said. "Are people just going to buy a ticket and be surprised when the overture starts? It just seems silly.”

Clarkstown North paid the licensing group Tams-Witmark about $2,000 for the rights for four performances of "Sweet Charity" this spring. No restrictions.

John Gwardyak, Eastchester’s director and technical director, said he'd never sign a contract that limited his ability to print or mention the title in publicity. He’s in the middle of directing “Curtains,” a musical-comedy-murder-mystery about show business.

“To quote the show I'm doing now, ‘It's a business.’ If I can't sell the show, I can't sell the seats. If I can't sell the seats, the dominoes begin to fall.”

“I would say half our seats at Eastchester High are filled by the community. We do commercials, postcards, and signs around town. Our show budgets come in around $30,000 and we get zero from the school district. If we could not advertise our show, we couldn't pay for our show.”

Theater people are an optimistic bunch. Briarcliff’s Ian Driver sees a silver lining.

“If nothing else, it's good experience for the students to engage with licensing and contract restrictions," he said. "I have a student production committee, and I make everyone have a copy of the document and we talked through the consequences of our choices from the beginning. As an intro to arts administration as a business it's actually been quite a useful tool.”