A Tale of Two “Kill a Mockingbird”s

Jason Tougaw

 

If you’ve ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, you likely have some strong opinions. The 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee is one of the most popular American novels of all time, as well as one of the most divisive and controversial. Many of us first read To Kill a Mockingbird in middle school or high school and, while its portrayal of racism, rape, and sexuality are still frequently cited as reasons the book ought to be banned, To Kill a Mockingbird still resonates with young and old audiences today, and remains a staple in school curricula.

So you might be surprised to learn that To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t intended for all of us, at least according to Scott Rudin, the lead producer behind the stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, currently running on Broadway. And, for once, it has nothing to do with the content. While the play has received glowing reviews and is regularly grossing $1.5 million every week, Rudin’s lawyers have sent cease-and-desist letters to numerous regional and community theatres across the country attempting to produce stage versions of To Kill a Mockingbird. Rudin, one of Broadway’s most powerful and prolific producers, is also known for having “a volatile temperament.” One New York Times article laments that Rudin dropped out as a producer on Clybourne Park in 2012 simply because the writer, Bruce Norris, would not appear as an actor in a TV show Rudin was producing. No thanks to Rudin, Clybourne Park found another producer and went on to win the Tony for Best Play.

Scott Rudin (center), who spends time with his family when he’s not out ruining other people’s livelihoods. Image Credit: Ali Eminov via Flickr.

If Rudin’s reasons for dropping out of Clybourne Park seemed petulant and confusing, his reasons for strong-arming small theaters for trying to stage a literary classic are even more so. Over the past few weeks, Rudin’s lawyers had sent letters of protest to Dramatic Publishing, a play-licensing company which owns the rights to the previous stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Christopher Sergel. Sergel, a playwright whose family owns Dramatic Publishing, was approved by Harper Lee herself in 1969 to adapt Mockingbird as a play, after numerous high schools and community theaters expressed a demand for a proper stage version. Sergel continued to work on the play for many years, eventually premiering the current completed version in 1991, two years before he died in 1993. Over the years, Sergel’s adaptation has been incredibly popular with regional theaters, and an annual performance of the play has taken place in Monroeville, Alabama (Lee’s hometown) for nearly 30 years. After Dramatic Publishing refused to return any of Rudin’s calls, he sent personal letters to each of the regional theaters producing Sergel’s version, threatening to sue them for damages of up to $150,000.

Rudin’s firm (ironically titled “Atticus LLC”) argues that Harper Lee’s original 1969 contract with Dramatic Publishing blocks any productions of To Kill a Mockingbird within 25 miles of cities with a population of 150,000 people or more, while a “first-class dramatic play” (e.g. a Broadway production) is being produced. This is a fairly standard practice; most licensing companies give Broadway rights-holders the ability to “veto” applications for professional productions, which they often do—this is the reason why your local community theatre is probably not going to do Wicked any time soon. Rudin, who owns “exclusive worldwide rights” to To Kill a Mockingbird, exercised this power earlier this year, when he shut down a touring production of the Sergel adaptation in the United Kingdom. When asked, Rudin responded that he had forced the UK production to cancel because the Broadway producers of To Kill a Mockingbird had plans to transfer it to the West End (British Broadway) and potentially tour the UK, although he did not outline any plans for this. This is, again, standard practice. Most producers prefer to keep a Broadway play from being produced locally if there is a national tour in the works—this protects the production’s “viability,” which essentially means that a bad community theatre production might scare people off from seeing the real deal.

30 Rock Tough Times for Aaron Sorkin – indavideo.hu from Eric Herz-O’Brien on Vimeo.

However, the issue is that the current Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is NOT the Sergel version; it was written by Aaron Sorkin, the writer behind The West Wing, A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs, and Molly’s Game. In other words, he’s got a pretty strong resume compared to Sergel. The regional theaters that Rudin was threatening to sue were not using Sorkin’s version, they were using the Sergel version. This is not standard practice. Generally, one official adaptation can’t infringe on the copyright of another adaptation. Since Lee approved Sergel’s adaptation, and Dramatic Publishing, not Rudin, owns the rights to Sergel’s adaptation, there should be no reason for litigation. But Harper Lee’s lawyers showed remarkable foresight in 1969; Sergel’s adaptation was originally intended for schools and amateur productions, so Dramatic Publishing should not have licensed these community theaters to produce Sergel’s To Kill a Mockingbird, since Dramatic Publishing knew that a “first-class” Mockingbird was playing on Broadway.

Harper Lee Medal

Harper Lee, who cares about black people, posing with George Bush, who doesn’t care about black people

Yet, according to Christopher Sergel III, Sergel’s grandson and the current CEO of Dramatic Publishing, “In all of our correspondence with Harper Lee herself over the past 30 years, she made it clear that she didn’t want Mockingbird to go to Broadway anyway.” In other words, it seems likely that Lee herself didn’t want a Broadway adaptation of Mockingbird, at least in 1969, but her lawyers included a provision in her contact with Sergel just in case there ever was. This seems in line with Lee’s behavior following the success of Mockingbird; she eventually stopped giving interviews, was enormously protective of its legacy, and promised she would never write another novel. However, Go Set a Watchman, a book Lee wrote in 1957 that has been described as a “rough draft” of To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 2015 amid controversy that Harper Lee, then blind, deaf, and living in a nursing home, was being taken advantage of by her lawyer and guardian, Tonja Carter (she’s important later). According to Sorkin’s riveting account of his experience writing the Broadway adaptation, Lee personally approved him to write the stage adaptation just weeks before she died in 2016. Given the events of Watchman, it is hard to know who to trust.

This has been all the more upsetting for the numerous community theaters who went through the proper process of applying to Dramatic Publishing for the staging rights, sunk thousands of dollars into production, rehearsals and promotion, and have now had to shut down productions due to Rudin’s legal threats, which promised exorbitant damages that any community theatre would be unable to endure, even if they were able to win a court case against Rudin, who has a net worth of $250 million. Many of these theaters were expected to perform the Sergel adaptation within weeks of receiving the cease-and-desist letters, and will be unable to schedule a production to replace Mockingbird. The Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah reported that it would lose $20,000 because of closing its production, while the Mugford Street Players in Massachusetts moved to a different theatre so that they would be more than 25 miles away from Boston, thus complying with the terms of Dramatic Publishing’s contract. Realizing what these small theaters were up against, OnStage Blog’s Chris Peterman encouraged people to #BoycottRudinPlays in protest, pointing out Broadway shows like The Ferryman, Hillary and Clinton, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, and King Lear, all of which Rudin is a producer behind.

Reactions ranged from outrage against Rudin’s actions—

 

—to calling out Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels (who stars as Atticus Finch in the Broadway show), for their complicity,

 

— to referring to Scott Rudin as a piece of used sportswear.

The bad publicity proved effective, most likely because many of these productions (including Mockingbird) will be eligible for Tony consideration at the end of April, and Rudin didn’t want to risk prolonged exposure. Although Rudin still refused to allow the theaters to perform the Sergel adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, he offered them the opportunity to perform Sorkin’s adaptation in its place, free of charge. Although some theaters were grateful for this turn of events and excited that having Sorkin’s name on the script might be a boon, most of the theaters had already taken the steps to destroy their sets and refund tickets they had already sold to Mockingbird. Furthermore, many of their casts had already learned the lines to the Sergel adaptation, and would likely be unable to switch over and learn the Sorkin version to meet their production deadlines. Seth Miller, the executive director of The Grand Theatre, said that he would consider performing the Sorkin adaptation, but stated, “I’m not going to commit to doing something I haven’t read.” He also stated that it was too late to replace the Sergel adaptation, which The Grand Theatre was supposed to perform beginning March 21st, with Sorkin’s, and that he would have to perform Sorkin’s adaptation sometime during the next season. Like Miller, many of these theaters are unsure how long Rudin’s offer is good for, since the logistics of learning, rehearsing, and set-building for a different script are hard to identify, even if the scripts used the same source material.

It’s worth noting that Sorkin and Rudin were actually sued last year by Lee’s estate, because, according to Tonja Carter (see?), the script had deviated from “the spirit” of Harper Lee’s novel. Although Sorkin and Rudin eventually won, the case proved exceptionally dramatic, with Rudin, who naturally, counter-sued Carter, and suggested that the cast perform the entire play in a courtroom so that a judge could decide whether Carter’s assertion was correct or not. As I mentioned previously, Sorkin’s adaptation is getting good reviews, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone loves it. Sergel III told Rolling Stone, “My grandfather’s adaptation represented the original work faithfully for 50 years,” and is one of the most popularly produced titles in Dramatic Publishing’s catalog. Now, it seems inevitable that other community theaters will be fearful of producing the Sergel adaptation, lest Rudin’s lawyers come after them.

So while Rudin’s gesture of goodwill towards the theaters may seem generous, it may ultimately be free self-promotion, as well as a setup to ensure that the Sorkin adaptation will eventually replace Sergel’s adaptation and become the standard To Kill a Mockingbird for all theaters. As American Theatre notes, Sergel’s adaptation still remains highly popular years after its publication, and it regularly appears as one of the ten most-produced plays in the country every year. Licensing can prove extremely lucrative down the line after a play finishes a Broadway run, especially for one as perennially relevant as To Kill a Mockingbird, and it appears Rudin is playing the long game to snatch Sergel’s place. It is not inconceivable that, when Sorkin’s adaptation becomes available for local theaters to produce, the publisher will use Sorkin’s name brand recognition to justify a heavy licensing cost. Who wants the dusty old Sergel adaptation for high-schoolers when you can get the acclaimed, Broadway-blockbusting, Aaron Sorkin masterpiece?

Ultimately, Rudin doesn’t care about these theaters. He’ll survive the bad PR. Although some blame lies with Dramatic Publishing for failing to exercise due diligence, Rudin first put small, uncompetitive theaters into compromising positions by suggesting they might somehow compete with a big-budget Broadway show, and is now leading them to compromise by dangling Sorkin’s adaptation over their heads to replace the Sergel. That’s not “protecting commercial viability,” that’s cornering the market.

I’m sure Harper Lee would be proud.

One thought on “A Tale of Two “Kill a Mockingbird”s”

  1. We never really got to know. Either Radley killed him or Jem killed him or he accidentally killed himself. The more important thing is it doesn’t matter who killed him because blaming Radley or Jem for something that that was not their intent (or was just self defense) would have been like killing a mockingbird. It was a lesson to the wise man, Atticus himself, from his own daughter who had grown up into a lady ironically by the end of the book.

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