Musical Show Rights?

...then Find out who owns the rights You have several choices Hal Leonard in Melbourne who are the Australian agent for MTI among others. Tamms Witmark in the US Dominies in Sydney if its one of the fairly rare Samuel French musicals. Really Useful tend to keep control of all the Lloyd Webber shows. Those will cover most musicals, some are covered by other smaller agencies. The website Musical Heaven is often useful in telling you who holds the rights. Then approach the holder of the rights first to find out if the show is available there are a number of reasons why it might not be. It may not as yet have been released, this can take some time after the professional release, some shows like "Bombay Dreams" may never be released some like "Porgy and Bess" are only released under extremely strict rules. It may be going to have a professional run in the next 12 months.Somebody else may be doing it soon in your area. There are a number of other possible reasons. Then if the show is available you will need to arrange rights. You will be required to hire scores, librettos and orchestra parts. You will be required to pay a deposit against a percentage of your total door take. This % can be as high as 22% of gross or even higher. The deposit is almost always in 4 figures and is separate from the amount you pay to hire the material. Are you frightened yet? Of course I am assuming you are not planning to do a recent Aussie musical. There aren't many of those and I don't know who to approach for rights in those cases. I believe that Jon English personally holds the rights to Paris. Then you need to find a theatre, a director, a musical director and a cast. Not to mention set designers and builders, lighting and sound guys and Stage Management. I hope you have very deep very full pockets. Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. www.tonymoore.id.au