It has happened again

Thank you to Gordon and Jeff for your comments. Interestingly, it has not hurt ticket sales. Spamalot is full and literally turning people away. The same is true for several other musical productions around Perth at the moment or at least they are close to full. Where it has hurt us (and I mean that in a Perth-wide sense) is that it has stretched the available talent very thinly. I dont think that I'm going out on a limb to suggest that we will be looking at the same scenario next June-July and Nov-Dec. To their credit, Melville Theatre have avoided this and have tended to schedule musicals away from these periods. I know that the ITA has done what it can to encourage the member companies to talk amongst themselves to sort out scheduling etc. but it's been difficult to get them to talk to each other in a productive way. Putting up proposed productions is problematic as there is already a large amount of rescheduling and re-programming taking place before the companies go public. It's rare for me to say this as I believe in being open and up front, but this is probably best kept behind the scenes. The more immediate problem is that the rights holders and publishers take a dim view to companies publishing programs on the WWW before they have actually secured the rights. If you want companies to start publicising programs before they are finalised, then you are effectively asking them to apply for rights and even hand over deposits for productions that by their own admission may, or may not go ahead, which is an unworkable situation. My conscience is clear as far as this is concerned. I'm involved in two productions next year and both are already posted in this web site (must resist urge to slip in gratuitous plug). Regards to all, David.