[Rumori] A Shoggoth on the Roof

[David Dixon]

I recently got an email (as fan email for Beatallica) from one of the perpetrators of "A Shoggoth on the Roof"-- an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's work to the tunes of "Fiddler on the Roof."  Funny stuff, if you dig Lovecraft.  Anyway, Chicago's Defiant Theatre was planning to actually stage it this fall, but the production's been cancelled due to legal threats from Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, the authors of "Fiddler".  Quoting from Harnick's letter:

  Since neither Mr. Bock nor I are happy with the notion that this parody of "Fiddler on the Roof" might be done in a stage production, I called Music Theatre International, the firm which licenses productions of "Fiddler".  What they told me is this.  While parodies do enjoy a degree of copyright protection and recordings of them can obtain compulsory licenses, the same is not necessarily true of stage works... [T]hey would have to apply for a license from MTI in order to produce a live stage production.  Such a license will not be granted.

So you can record a parody, but you can't perform it?  What the hell?


Read the whole sordid story, and see a very funny mockumentary about "Shoggoth" at:
http://www.cthulhulives.org/Shoggoth


D^2
http://sensoryresearch.com/~starkeff