Teacher plans to produce 'Encanto', reminded that rights aren't available

by Chris Peterson, OnStage Blog Founder

Last week a teacher from India, posted in a theatre educator Facebook group that his school was going to do Disney’s ‘Encanto’ for their school musical this year and that he was looking for help on how to design sets and props for the show.

He was very quickly reminded that the rights to the musical aren’t available and that he shouldn’t continue trying to perform the show.

Other educators in the FB group told the teacher that licensing rights to the movie musical weren’t available and that any production of it would be considered copyright infringement which would lead to Disney suing the school. It’s unclear if the teacher will heed this advice but I will keep my eye on the school(which I’m not naming yet), to see if they actually follow through with this.

Needless to say, I hope his school doesn’t follow through with their illegal production of the Disney movie. We’ve seen this happen in the past where schools, universities, and even churches try to sneak productions past copyright law and produce full-length performances without obtaining licensing rights.

Some of these illegal productions have occurred overseas but many have happened here in the U.S.

For instance, back in 2018, a high school in Virginia had to cancel its production of Disney’s “The Lion King” because its theatre department had not obtained licensing rights to do the show. The worst part was, performances had already started by then.

There isn’t a year that goes by where I’m not alerted to a theatre production by various organizations that are violating copyright laws by either doing shows without acquiring licensing or making changes to scripts that would violate agreements. Some of these are done with full knowledge that it’s wrong and other times it’s done because theatre leaders aren’t aware of what they’re doing.

If legal action is taken by the rights holder, neither excuse would hold up in court.

That is why it is so important for directors and other theatre leaders to do the research and become knowledgeable of the extent of copyright law and how to properly purchase licensing to do a show. We’ve written several articles that discuss this.

And there are some ways schools can perform certain materials. In some cases, concerts of musicals performed by educational institutions or non-profit organizations might be subject to different copyright considerations. Some countries have exceptions in their copyright laws that allow for limited use of copyrighted works for educational or non-profit purposes.

But to do a full-length production without obtaining licensing rights? Don’t do that.

I hope this teacher in India takes this advice because the last thing I would want is for the kids to be punished when their production is shut down because the adults in the room didn’t do the right thing.