Q: I'd like to ask you how much you can change a production of a certain musical so that it may still be called the same... I recently saw a production of Godspell in Graz/Austria. I have recently finished playing Jesus in it myself in Wr. Neustadt/Austria, so i was eager to see the differences between the productions...but when the show started, i felt betrayed: The producers cut out all of the original text, used new text in it. They changed the music too, so that even I had difficulties to get what song that one was. But what struck me hardest was that the philosophy of the show changed: In all productions I've seen there's a lot of fun, the audience is included into the show, the show is great fun. So is the movie. But in that production everything was sad and slow. I felt like jumping on stage and show them how to do it...it felt more like a betrayal to the musical than the musical itself...they even cut out the finale! Jesus died without it...and no reprise of Prepare ye the way of the lord as a way to show the hope...What came was an absolutly lame reaction of the audience (in our production and the others I've seen the audience demanded more and more afterwards...) and a feeling of a destroyed musical. But is that still Godspell? I mean, no Finale, changed parts in the score, cutting out the texts and replacing them with other texts, leaving out all the fun and just leaving a sad and boring mood...Do you think that still is Godspell?

A: Thank you for alerting me to the unconscionable liberties taken with the production of GODSPELL you saw. I am already having the licensing agent look into this. Of course, GODSPELL is designed for each presenting group to put their own individual stamp on it in terms of the specific improvisations and the production design, but you are quite right, when it involves omitting or adding songs and text, that is emphatically NOT still GODSPELL. What if someone presented a production of MY FAIR LADY from which they cut Higgins' opening number and ELiza didn't return at the end; would that still be MY FAIR LADY? Of course not. It disturbs me greatly to think that productions are occurring, with my name on them as one of the writers, which do not represent the show. Thank you for taking the time to inform me of one of them. Stephen Schwartzx