Young Vic 'Tree' Scandal

If they expect me to do any dancing they can do one. I’ll get involved in audience participation, but no dancing!

ali973...a few things...read my post more carefully,please...I didn’t say anything about the cases being the same so please don’t infer this.I said that the protests about CP showed what can be achieved if people raise their voices...also you are down-playing the seriousness of what could be the issue of someone’s intellectual property being ‘took’ as Baz describes it.Empathy is important here.Empathy tells me how angry I would feel if I was in the same position as the two girls.They are emotionally traumatised by this.

Now getting news coverage on BBC News. This story is getting a lot of coverage!

Just received an email about the performance I’m seeing on Saturday. A run time of 90 mins and warnings that there may be loud noises, flashing lights, smoke, strong language and scenes of an adult nature. Also - Come ready to dance before the performance begins ( I think I’ll be giving that bit a miss).

Anyone inviting me to dance would be invited in return to get stuffed. People have bought tickets to observe, not to participate. If you want lots of people dancing, hire dancers. 

Sounds absolutely hideous. 

Here's the BBC interview with Tori Allen-Martin (actually the clip seems to be part of a longer interview)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-48859746/playwright-accuses-idris-elba-and-kwame-kwei-armah-of-claiming-her-work

And in other "Tree" news ...

Most likely none of the above - it'll blow over and the production will carry on more or less as usual.

Hopefully the women will raise enough funds to cover their legal fees and will have raised their profile enough to be offered future work.

With Kwame running and sliding about on his knees?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a theatre commission where the contract was signed before starting work.

My last play was published and on bookshelves before the contract was signed.

Shocking how much laxity is the norm.

That's a bit sparse on detail, isn't it? Considering the level of detail involved in the original accusation.

YV and KKA (and now IE) may not have handled this the best, but for what it's worth my feeling is that no matter how they had responded it would have been called out as being insufficient. They've suggested meeting publicly somehow, which is being framed here as some sort of intimidation tactic, but if they'd suggested a private meeting then I've little doubt the board would have seen that as a secretive and legalistic delay tactic. Similarly, talk about personal circumstances is emotional manipulation, while being formal is cold and legalistic.

It's easy to suggest that credit and/or financial restitution should be given, but since no one here has actually seen the scripts or the agreements made between the parties, I don't see why board members are so adamant that this is the right or fair course of action. Of course we each need to make decisions about what we support based on what information we have, but it strikes me as hugely premature to act as if this is open & shut. After all, giving credit & money wouldn’t be ‘fair’ if it turns out that their involvement wasn’t as much as has been assumed.

The issue of credit is contentious in pretty much every job (not just the arts), and it's certainly true that those at the top have much more power than those coming up. Depending on your interests, we probably each have strong opinions on the origins of Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, the work of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the rewrites of screenwriters like Andrew Kevin Walker, ghostwriters of books, the artwork in the boardgame Scythe, the creation of Facebook, the influence of comics on The Matrix and The Fifth Element and so on… But these issues really aren't clearcut at all, not least because how 'original' any story, idea, song, etc. is, and the level of contribution to justify credit and/or money is not an objective thing ethically or legally.

The power that the public has through things like social media is surely a good thing. However, while the legal approach to dealing with these things certainly benefits those with the money, I’m not convinced that this ‘trial in public’ is always better. Not least because it encourages us to make strong opinions based on limited (and often uneven) information, generally based on emotion rather than facts. And while the net result might usually be positive, the extreme of the flipside is things like the recent debacles with Zimmerman’s address on Twitter or the Boston marathon bomber on Reddit, or more broadly the rise in anti-vax.

My guess is that the end result of this will be some form of credit and financial restitution. And this will probably be the right thing. However, I can’t help but think that even if the writers had no actual ground, the YV would give them credit anyway, since this is what the public demands.

My thoughts.
Does anyone on this board think that Tori and Sarah haven't been done over on this project? Their account was compelling. Statement from Kwame was unconvincing and invoking a dead father tasteless. Now that was poor writing! Young Vic offering ££'s stinks.

The phrase in Idris's statement "In order to obtain a commission we all understood that it had to take a new direction and re-emphasise the original IP from Mi Mandela and start again". "We" being, presumably, the producers, financiers and Idris and Kwame. Tori and Sarah were involved from the start, had done workshops; hellfire, Jo Riding was involved in the workshops! "We" sits very badly with me. "Us" and "Them".

And another dead father - even more poor - "To this day I still haven't been to the place where my father was born. I share this background to offer some perspective on how offensive and troubling these claims are to me and my family". OFFENSIVE!?! To me AND MY FAMILY"?"

And the comments as to why so many have their boxers in a bunch over this - I love to go to the theatre, I love to be involved in forums such as this. To shrug and say "This is the business of Show" is a cop-out. I don't want to see my hard earned £'s supporting behaviour such as this.