The union rules for recording a show are complex and somewhat impenetrable. Although the salary requirements seem reasonable at first blush, they can be prohibitively expensive for a small producer. The rules do not permit live recordings except under very particular situations (although this does not prevent avid fans from making illegal "bootleg" recordings, now apparently available through Napster).
(Beautiful logo design by Leah Becker)
Because of the expenses as well as the union hoops we'd need to jump through, we were never able to get recordings of the actual orchestrations of the previous Knapp-Alper shows (Chamberlain: A Civil War Romance, The Library, and The Audition) as produced. All of our shows have fairly complete demos, but none utilize the actual production orchestrations. For example, the demo recording for Chamberlain uses most of the original cast, and the Larry Hochman (with Bruce Coughlin and Douglas Besterman) orchestrations are utilized -- but using synthesizer recreation. The situation for The Library is even worse: our demos use a number of different performances, performers, and orchestrations, including the original demo (with orchestrations by myself and Doug Besterman, and featuring Sarah Knapp and Roger Bart, among others), some live performance recording taken from a special version we did for NYU-Tisch School of the Arts (expanded and enlarged to utilize more students), and some in-house writer performed demos. Some of the material has never been recorded. And there are no recordings of the new, "official" orchestrations (for four musicians on a multitude of intruments and toys).
We did not want this to happen again. Although we were in negotiation with a number of producers to take the show to the next step, we felt strongly that we wanted to preserve the CAP21 version with its small orchestration. We didn't know whether the next production would have an orchestra anywhere near the size we used at CAP -- talks were everywhere from four to eighteen!
It was important that we proceed as quickly as we could, since our cast was bound to be headed to the four corners within weeks; and since the expenses would be coming from the authors' pockets (and the authors pockets are relatively shallow), we decided to make a demo, as opposed to an official "original cast recording."
This freed us up in a number of ways, but limited us in others. We could use our cast and orchestra (and "reimburse" them a small amount for their time and expenses), for instance, but could not release the recording for sale without incurring the wrath of any number of unions (and probably several actors and their agents). Since our goal was basically to "preserve" the original production for posterity, this is not viewed as a terrible hardship. (And should we have the opportunity or need to sell this recording, we can always go back and pay all the required fees.)
Next week we'll go into some of the gory details of the recording process, as well as provide links to some samples of the final product.
To read more about the production, see actor, staff, and creative team bios, etc., here are a few links.
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 1
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 2
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 3
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 4
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 5
The Immigrant,
A New Musical
CAP21's website
The Knapp-Alper Pages
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 2/6/01
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