HI! It's wild, but I had the same thing happen with trying to secure the rights to Once Upon a One More Time. The show isn't listed as restricted, there isn't a current national tour, and no school in our state is doing it (as far as I could tell from the "Coming Soon" feature on MTI). However, they delayed a response until I inquired about it. I received a message saying the title was "highly restricted," partly due to the "current national tour." They also told me it would be 2-5 weeks and that we should look at second options. I responded and told them their website doesn't reflect restrictions and no current tour is planned. Within a few hours, the rights were approved. I wonder if there was some glitch or a holiday default message like that to buy the reps from MTI more time. It's so strange, as I have never had that experience before. I'm glad that we both at least got our shows approved. Break legs!
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Shana Hochstetler
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-22-2024 18:57
From: Christopher Sheldon
Subject: Urinetown Rights Snafu?
Hi All,
To give MTI credit, we heard that we are all set for rights on Friday. I appreciate all the work that our rep at MTI did. Don't know if he did it specifically to get it done before everybody left for holiday break but that was the effect so that was much appreciated.
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Christopher Sheldon
Performing Arts Teacher
National Speech and Debate Association
Original Message:
Sent: 12-18-2024 18:16
From: Christopher Sheldon
Subject: Urinetown Rights Snafu?
hello all,
I just encountered an issue with MTI that I haven't seen in 25+ years of directing shows. We applied for rights to Urinetown a while back (4 high school performances, 350 seat theater, obviously non-professional etc etc) Should have been plenty of time for a 20 year old show that every high school does. We hadn't heard back in what seemed like too long and emailed to ask what was up. Today we got an email saying the rights are restricted and our application has to go to the actual rights holders for approval. Said it might take 2-5 weeks but they can't give us a timeline and we should think about second choice shows. (!?!?!)
Any guesses as to why this is so? We are in Worcester, MA and there is another high school in Providence, RI (50 miles away) doing it on the same dates we wanted. Could that possibly be an issue? I know Encores is doing it in NYC in February, but we want March and aren't exactly competing with Encores for audience...
I need to be prepping and designing and now we have to put everything on hold. Anybody else having issues or heard of anything like this before?
Thanks,
Chris
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Christopher Sheldon
Performing Arts Teacher
National Speech and Debate Association
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