PUTZ, Yes! CHEVALIER, No!
by Michael B. Druxman on 09/19/11
September 20, 2011
Several years ago, I wrote a 2-person play, inspired by my relationship with my son, David, when he was in his late teens.
The name of the play is PUTZ.
Back then, we came very close to doing an Equity-waiver production of PUTZ with actor Reni Santoni (Enter Laughing, Dirty Harry) doing my role.
That production fell apart, the play went on the shelf and I got busy doing other things.
Recently, I took a look at the play and, although it might need some minor updating, I'm still very pleased with it. In fact, I'm probably going to publish it and make it available through CreateSpace, but first I'm going to do a staged reading just to see how it plays in front of an audience.
In fact, yesterday I arranged for this reading to take place at our temple here in Austin on March 10th.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that, barring something unforeseen, I am not going to publish my one-person play about Maurice Chevalier.
I'm quite proud of this musical play. It's somewhat different in structure than the other plays in The Hollywood Legends catalog.
The problem is that, unlike with JOLSON, I do not have the live performance rights to the songs.
Don't ask! It's a long sad story.
Until yesterday, I thought that I could still license the play for productions in cabaret-type theaters, but after I spoke to a representative at ASCAP, I learned that that is not possible. According to this knowledgeable guy, if there is a book (i.e. a dramatic script) involved, songs have to be licensed directly from the music publishers or copyright owners...and that won't happen.
So, CHEVALIER is going back into the drawer. :-(
You have a creative day.
Michael
