New York Production of 1984 Canceled Due to Rights Issues

According to Peter Tear, executive producer of the 59E59 venue, “On Tuesday [January 11], we received a phone call from a lawyer representing a commercial Off-Broadway production of 1984 that is being planned for the spring. I then got on the phone with the literary executor of the Orwell estate. It turns out that Joe Tantalo, the director of Godlight Theatre Company, hadn’t fully secured the rights to the adaptation for the production that was to have had its first performances here this evening.”

The stage version of 1984 that the company had intended to present is the work of Alan Lyddiard, artistic director of Northern Stage in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England. “It’s been done a lot in the U.K,” Tear told TheaterMania. “I think the issue here is that Godlight hadn’t properly secured the U.S. rights.” (In the spring of 2003, a show titled George Orwell’s 1984 — adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E. Hall, Jr., and William A. Miles, Jr., with original music by Damon Law — had a brief run at the Bank Street Theatre.)

In place of 1984, Godlight will offer another show at 59E59 with the same cast: an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. “They’re rehearsing now,” said Tear, “and will probably open next Wednesday, January 19.”