Can our primary school (UK) perform the musical 'Oliver' without breaking perfor

Question:

Can our primary school (UK) perform the musical 'Oliver' without breaking performance/copyright laws?

Our children have been practising to perform the 'Oliver' musical for 3 weeks. We will be performing it in a school hall. Today we were told that we are breaking copyright and performance laws and that we should not go ahead. Help! 200 children are going to be devastated! Is there any way around this?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: It is unclear who told you and it is also unclear whether they know what they are talking about, unless you say whether you propose to perform without paying royalties, how many performance you propose to mount and whether people who attend the performances will do so for an admission charge or not.

Sometimes a West End producer can insist on there being no other productions while their production is still on, This is a clause of the contract that they would sign with the owners of the rights (Lionel Bart etc). But even then, that might be limited to barring other productions in London and would not normally be aiming to prevent amateurs putting on short runs. It is aimed at commercial rivals in other 1,000 seater theatres with year-long tours.

Although Charles Dickens is more than 75 years dead, the writers of the book and lyrics and music are probably mainly still alive or only recently deceased and the show is not out of copyright as a Shakespeare play is, so some royalties are payable.

Presumably the school has mounted not-yet-out-of-copyright shows before and ought to know about seeking the rights to perform it and to find out the cost of the royalties, before committing itself to and advertising a production. So I am not sure why you have got yourselves into this pickle. I take it the copyright holders do not yet know of the existence of the production?

Surely this is easily solved by paying the royalties? You may perhaps ask for a reduced royalty if it is a high fixed fee per performance. Or ask if you can pay 7.5% of the box office take instead, a common arrangement in the theatre. 100 people paying ⣲ each for three performances to see the show would mean a box office take of ⣶00 and a total royalty of ⣴5 therefore, less than 25p a child.

The annual spend by the LEA on a schools of 200 pupils must be sufficient to find what is needed, especially when it is so obviously of educational value to the children. And there is always the PTA who might be persuaded to cover the costs as a last resort.

Writers and composers are paid by royalties. It is what they survive on while they write their next show, it is not unreasonable that they be paid for the use of their material. The desire to try to get round paying royalties is not something the school or the LEA can endorse and that is not the right mindset to tackle this problem.

Focus on how much it will cost and how you will find it.