Obtaining rights for the use of copyright music in theatre
productions, both in the US and in the UK, can be a tortuous
task. Increasingly, major labels want to negotiate on a per-show
basis, but their frame of reference is often limited to film or
television, and their awareness of the state of most theatre
companies’ financial affairs is virtually nil.  I was once
involved in a show about soccer called Elton John’s Glasses,
which involved a number of the great man’s songs as scene-drop
music. We had to negotiate directly, rather than using the usual
channels in the UK provided by The Performing Rights Society, to
sort out usage fees, so I set out to make sure we had permission
from the correct people and almost immediately discovered that
obtaining said rights was going to be tricky. No one seemed to
know who actually owned the rights: Small companies had been
taken over by large companies who had merged with even bigger
companies, and the trail finally ended up, after much
telephoning and research, at the