Exit stage left
Last Tuesday was a sad day for all those who have wanted to see A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends frolic across the Polish stage "in the flesh."
"The license to stage Winnie-the-Pooh expired last Tuesday (Nov. 28)," said Alicja Nowicka, foreign license manager with the Association of Stage Authors and Composers (ZAiKS). ZAiKS protects creators' rights and deals with licenses for foreign plays.
Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared on the Polish stage 28 years ago. "The (Culture) Ministry signed the first license in 1972 for two stage adaptations," she said. The most recent license for staging any plays based on Winnie-the-Pooh stories in Poland was signed two years ago. "More than 10 theaters throughout Poland ran plays under this license," Nowicka said. "And in general, Winnie-the-Pooh is incredibly popular (among theaters)," she said.
When ZAiKS attempted to renew the license, the agency that grants licenses to stage adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh London-based Curtis Brown Group told the association that renewal wasn't possible "because the owners of the author's rights (Milne's heirs) are going to sell the rights to somebody else," Nowicka said.
ZAiKS doesn't know who is going to buy the rights, but last week's media gossip suggested a Hollywood film producer, or maybe even Walt Disney. Nowicka said ZAiKS expected to know the new owner in mid-December, and looked forward to commencing negotiations.
But there is no guarantee that the owner will want to share Winnie, Eeyore and Piglet. "Anything is possible," said Antoni Konczak, director of the Poznan-based Animation Theater. The theater, which was created in 1945, first staged its Winnie-the-Pooh extravaganza this April. The play had 100 performances over seven months, and news of the license's expiry went down badly.
"It was a bad news because the demand for Winnie was so great," Konczak said. "We played Winnie to full capacity." For him, the circumstance under which his theater was forced to stop the performances hurts. "It's just egotism," he said. "There is a free market and those who have money can buy anything."
Saying the bear of little brain is the property of humanity rather than a commodity, the theater protested two weeks before the license was due to expire along with Poznan's Zamek Cultural Center. The protest was well attended, and a few hundred people signed a petition requesting Winnie's return.
" 'Winnie belongs to us,' 'Winnie has to stay,' 'We want Winnie back,'" were the kind of pleas people were writing on the petition," said Zamek's spokeswoman, Joanna Przygonska. She said the petition wouldn't be sent anywhere, because in a world ruled by market forces it wouldn't have an effect, but the center just wanted to do something that focused attention on Winnie's sad plight. Poznan's VIPs also joined the protest. "They were reading Winnie-the-Pooh stories out loud," Przygonska said. "And Poznan's scientists organized a discussion on Winnie."
Unlike Poznan, Warsaw approached the lapsed license more calmly.
Studio Theater, located in the Palace of Culture and Science, also had to say goodbye to its play, "Kubus P" (Winnie P), which has been packing in the crowds since October. "It was a very popular play throughout its 50 performances, and tickets sold out," said Maja Ruszpel, spokeswoman for Studio Theater.
Those who flocked to see Winnie on stage will have to settle for reading the books ... at least until the book-license rights come up for grabs in three years. "Only one company (per country) can have the right to publish the book," said Anna Smorul from Graal, the literary agency that acts as an agent for the author's estate in Eastern and Central Europe. "Now the rights in Poland are held by (publishing house) Proszynski i S-ka until April 2004, and I am sure the company will want to extend them."
