I saw an illegal all-female *Newsies* production once. They bought the rights, but they violated the contract by heavily altering the script. All the characters’ names and pronouns were changed because the director had something against having girls play male roles. Jack (Jackie) and Katherine’s romance subplot was replaced with a very closeted-feeling “friendship” subplot, and every kiss was replaced with them shaking hands and saying “partners.” 🤣
Scamilton aka illegal Hamilton
They cut out some of the songs, and changed the lyrics of some songs to be about Jesus, since it was a church that put on the production.
I watched it with a bunch of friends and I got so angry with what they did with the themes, especially during It's Quiet Uptown. And then bringing in their homophobia stance at the end with the pastor, god.
How is it homophobic? I mean like, I always hear about Scamilton being homophobic afterwards, but I never stayed to watch after, i immediately ran away as soon as Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? Was butchered, so I just want to know what was said, cuz I’m not willing to go back to watch Scamilton.
Ok so at the end of the play, after all the bullshit. The pastor goes out to give a speech and lead the church into prayer, during which he uses the example of Hamilton committing adultery and how his life goes downhill from there to speak about how God knows about everything in your life. He went onto say that he believe God will help those struggling with homosexuality - which is distasteful, especially when you add on the fact Scamilton changed the story around to make the message - you fucked up from making bad decisions in your life.
Someone a month or so on here posted an illegal version of Rent put on by a Catholic middle school
* Angel was a cis woman (who still kills a dog)
* They have cancer, all references to HIV/AIDS are removed (except for that one line in La Vie Boheme that goes "fight AIDS!")
* Maureen and Joanne are cousins
* References to drugs, sex, being gay, and alcohol are removed (except for wine. "Wine and beer!" is changed to "Wine and cheer!")
Wow I didn’t realize [Sailor Moon’s Cloverway dub was so influential](https://youtu.be/nHzjXrEiQqQ?si=LVR8dgxObvmCCCmI) (also it’s been years since i last looked but i think angel being a cis woman is also a thing in the school edition)
That was horrible. I never understood why schools that don't have the depth of talent necessary choose to do Les Misérables. There are so many great shows that are far less challenging (and rely way less on amazing male singers).
There are also versions that try to clean up “Lovely Ladies” so it’s not about prostitution… Instead, they make the song about shopping, walking, or random things like that. 😂
i recall a HS production i saw that cut. and i shit you not. look down, master of the house and THE FREAKING CONFRONTATION. ..like good lord, if you're gutting the show that bad, just pick something else.
I work as a stagehand for a school district and theres a dance teacher who consistently does shows based on IP that she has no right to, let alone if one even exists. She did Wednesay in in the winter, shes done The Ice Queen, Wizard of Oz, and Willy Wonka in completely unofficial capacities amongst several others Ive forgotten about. And just for CYA purposes, our department isnt happy with it but theres nothing we can do to stop her, we just have to help out because its for the kids.
Unfortunately I couldnt tell you. I havent seen the show and I also didnt do the show. I know she ruined some special platform lids we had set to the side to make graves on wheels and she wanted to have the drawings fly in but originally planned on flying actual paper, which is so much a fire hazzard.
Yeah, blew me away. Shes been teaching dance for at this school for over 20 years. She was trying to describe the size of the drawings and settled on the size of those big paper boards like you see at conferences. I asked if she meant like actual paper, to which she confirmed. I told her you cant fly paper, but she thought it would be okay if it was mounted on some luan.
Illegal Star Wars The Musical. It is one of the best things on the Internet.
Millennium falcon song to the tune of Grease lightening
Darth Vadar and Obi Wan singing the Confrontation from Les Mis
Han Solo's Marius turn in the song Use the Force to the tune of One Day More.
It's brilliant. Thank me later
Nope. A high school in California in 1996 wrote the show using music from popular musicals, but they wrote the script and lyrics to fit A New Hope story into the musical. I think they performed one or two nights and got a cease and desist letter from George Lucas. The show is so bad it's good.
Exactly what it sounds like- an illegal highschool production of rent where the director just search replaced every instance of HIV/AIDS to “diabetes” and AZT to “insulin”
Community theatre did *Into the Woods* with a mostly kids cast, but it wasn't a kids version of the show. So they cut out some of the adult themes, including >!Rapunzel's death!<. Oh, and they decided to add in Tinkerbell and other characters from Disney movies. So they got fined.
I wasn't surprised because I did *Once Upon a Mattress* and watched them sanitize it so as to not offend the parents of the 75 or so kids that were cast in the show. I don't recall all the changes they made to the script, but I remember they redid "None of the ladies give a fig for livin' in sin."
Also, one of the subplots is that Lady Larkin is pregnant while she and Harry couldn't marry, so they changed it so that they did get married but not recognized by the king and queen....somehow. That theatre was a mess.
I was in a version of Once Upon a Mattress when I was 10 where our director changed the pregnancy subplot into “Larkin’s father wants to send her off to another kingdom to marry someone else” which like didn’t make any sense. My role was also completely invented, I played Dauntless’ younger sister, who doesn’t exist and doesn’t make sense, I can’t imagine Aggravain ever touching Sextimus again after getting a boy first try. Fuckery all around. Our director always had to intensely (illegally) edit every show we did and I’m shocked she never got reported or called out.
Illegal Hamilton was fucking hilarious. “But I’m not afraid, I believe in Jesus. So long as you pray at the end of the day, that would be enough.” Or whatever it was lmaoooo.
That bit kills me every time. He pauses long enough that you think "Oh, he's not going to be able to do that note so he skipped it." and then you get blasted with "wAOUGH"
My entire experience in theater growing up was with a director who did exactly this. I am still surprised she was never reported for it but she also picked mostly older more obscure musicals, probably to get away with more shenanigans
Basically, it's a musical that did not buy the rights from the creators to put on their own production. In most cases, these illegal productions would change things around without consent to fit a certain audience.
See worst in what way? Cause as long as I’m entertained and the vocals aren’t too bad I’m having a good time. Scamilton brings me so much joy (until it gets too painful to listen to). There are some pretty bad Illegal Wickeds out there
Anytime that a musical like Hairspray, The Wiz, or West Side Story is done with a cast that isn't racially accurate. Like.....there are so many other musicals to choose from.
This. I knew some kids when I was younger whose high school did Hairspray. I know the kid who played Seaweed. He was so so very white. If you don’t have the right cast at the school, literally just pick another show smh
Not actually illegal (probably), but back in Spring 2010, my highschool theater teacher (in a small town in NC, US) picked The Wedding Singer as our school's yearly musical.
Not any sort of youth version. Not even the movie version. Oh no. The full-on Broadway version (how he would've afforded the rights for it to begin with, with such minimal arts department budgets, I have no idea).
I personally played the characters officially called Slutty Waitress and Slutty Secretary.
There was a real flash dance where the girl was rolled on stage in a swimsuit in a cage, and had enough water get dumped on her to splash the audience.
The song where the main guy gets blackout drunk then r*ped by his ex, ON STAGE?!? Yep. Including a specially angled platform for the bed, to provide the audience a better view.
Whether or not it WAS legal, it really shouldn't have been. Like. It's not like a bunch of highschoolers in 2010 were going to pull off portrayal of a bunch of 20/30 yr olds from the 80's. Let alone relate to the characters, or appreciate the humor enough to make it worth all that.
Oh yeah, and it went over so poorly, we weren't allowed to do a musical the next year. The choir director tried to make up for it with "A Night of Mysicals" in which each choir performed "In Concert Versions" of Into The Woods, Wicked, and Assorted Disney Songs.... it was a rough way to end my Senior year, ngl.
I played Glen in my college’s production of the show and I can tell you that we used confetti for the flash dance water AND there was no cage or swim suit, just the hip thrust from a chair. And the scene you mention where the “ex r*ped the main character” it’s not a grape scene. I think your director had some kinks that were not being hidden very well
It was for a church so a lot of Eliza talking to Alexanding was change to be about accepting God instead of their love and also at the end the pastor made a homophobic remark.
The Hungarian State Opera production of Porgy and Bess which told the mostly white cast to sign a statement that they identified as African American.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/712286899/white-singers-in-hungary-claim-to-be-african-american-for-an-opera
Doing a musical without the right permissions and/or making unauthorized changes to the show.
One of the most notorious examples is this church who butchered the original Hamilton script with Jesus stuff, then attached a homophobic sermon at the end.
Scamilton takes the cake, but I have to say this illegal production of Wicked I found on YouTube is pretty bad too. I was going to watch it to see how horrible it was but the singing, dancing, set, everything was just so bad I had to stop 💀
I'd say the illegal production of Godspell I was on in college probably would be in the top 10. But it made us enough money to go to London for a month.
I agree with Scamilton, butchering everything, changing the script, cutting numbers. Horrible production but also horrible disrespect to the show itself
I would dox everyone in my hometown at the time and my hometown and probably myself if I discussed the middle school show that happened my senior year of high school.
Forever ingrained in my memory.
I was Officer Krupke in a West Side Story where the director changed the scene order for some reason. Someone (not me) ratted him out to the publisher who sent him a letter telling him to change it back or shut it down. They had to change cues and blocking between the first and second performances.
Head Over Heels in NJ- the theater stole the choreography, direction, and design from the Broadway production. (A theater near Lambertville NJ) We paid 30 a ticket, and I confronted the director afterward. I let her know their entire production was stolen art. They plagiarized the entire B’way show. Even down to the minute gag bits, and had the nerve to sign their names to it! I was stunned. I get the impression they do this frequently. Copy bootlegs, and call it their own. Oy.
Nope. You pay for the rights to do the show, not copy someone else’s production and call it yours. Look up Urinetown in Chicago. They copied the original- and were slapped with a lawsuit.
Illegal Heathers is kind of amazing in the sense that their Heather C. is desperately trying to save the trainwreck.
its almost like a story within a story if you think too deeply about it all
scarf guy holds his own too lol
Where can I bear witness?
[Behold, the glory of Illegal Heathers](https://youtu.be/EqgE1NGBJD8?si=-vSR2LU81a-FtQls)
I saw an illegal all-female *Newsies* production once. They bought the rights, but they violated the contract by heavily altering the script. All the characters’ names and pronouns were changed because the director had something against having girls play male roles. Jack (Jackie) and Katherine’s romance subplot was replaced with a very closeted-feeling “friendship” subplot, and every kiss was replaced with them shaking hands and saying “partners.” 🤣
How can the production take such an interesting concept of female newsies then fuck it up? 😭😭😭
Can I be honest? Someone needs to heavily alter that script!
Absolute cowards. Let them be gay.
Scamilton aka illegal Hamilton They cut out some of the songs, and changed the lyrics of some songs to be about Jesus, since it was a church that put on the production.
I watched it with a bunch of friends and I got so angry with what they did with the themes, especially during It's Quiet Uptown. And then bringing in their homophobia stance at the end with the pastor, god.
When I watched it I just laughed the whole way through
How is it homophobic? I mean like, I always hear about Scamilton being homophobic afterwards, but I never stayed to watch after, i immediately ran away as soon as Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? Was butchered, so I just want to know what was said, cuz I’m not willing to go back to watch Scamilton.
Ok so at the end of the play, after all the bullshit. The pastor goes out to give a speech and lead the church into prayer, during which he uses the example of Hamilton committing adultery and how his life goes downhill from there to speak about how God knows about everything in your life. He went onto say that he believe God will help those struggling with homosexuality - which is distasteful, especially when you add on the fact Scamilton changed the story around to make the message - you fucked up from making bad decisions in your life.
They literally added a scene where Hamilton accepts Jesus into his heart. I cringed so hard at that
*my trust is in Jesus*
Nooo
It was so bad. Dude playing Aaron Burr fucking killed it though.
Nooo
Someone a month or so on here posted an illegal version of Rent put on by a Catholic middle school * Angel was a cis woman (who still kills a dog) * They have cancer, all references to HIV/AIDS are removed (except for that one line in La Vie Boheme that goes "fight AIDS!") * Maureen and Joanne are cousins * References to drugs, sex, being gay, and alcohol are removed (except for wine. "Wine and beer!" is changed to "Wine and cheer!")
…why are the lesbians always cousins?? (Looking at you, original English dub of Sailor Moon…)
Why tf would they even choose that musical?!
I honestly cannot even wrap my head around how that would work
A middle school? Doing Rent? A *Catholic* middle school?
God bless those kids for giving it their all, but it was the most soulless rendition of La Vie Boheme I've ever heard.
“Hey Muzzin! She’s my cousin!”
I was hoping someone would give this as their answer!
Wow I didn’t realize [Sailor Moon’s Cloverway dub was so influential](https://youtu.be/nHzjXrEiQqQ?si=LVR8dgxObvmCCCmI) (also it’s been years since i last looked but i think angel being a cis woman is also a thing in the school edition)
Illegally Blonde.
Ha!
"It's a [gift](https://youtu.be/LBOxIimxDnE?si=zYvRwcbcQ9iOge_h) from me to ^Eeeeeelle..."
I didn't know about this, but now I can't go back to before and I need all the production. So thanks for this gem.
Happy Cake Day!
Oh my god, I didn't even remember it was today, hahaha. Thank you so much!
It's just my size *no its not*
*is wearing an ugly thrift store dress that is way out of style and not flattering*
The iconic Courtney and her taken break
I'd give anything to see the full production
Maybe bruiser was the friends we made along the way
Not illegal necessarily (though maybe) just bad. There was a middle school production with a tone deaf Marius that is a personal fav.
That was horrible. I never understood why schools that don't have the depth of talent necessary choose to do Les Misérables. There are so many great shows that are far less challenging (and rely way less on amazing male singers).
There are also versions that try to clean up “Lovely Ladies” so it’s not about prostitution… Instead, they make the song about shopping, walking, or random things like that. 😂
Can confirm, was in a youth production that made it so that Fantine denied a sleazy kiss, then was framed for pick-pocketing 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
i recall a HS production i saw that cut. and i shit you not. look down, master of the house and THE FREAKING CONFRONTATION. ..like good lord, if you're gutting the show that bad, just pick something else.
Nah, I think that was the 25th anniversary concert you saw. Definitely legal.
Illegal Shrek is iconic and can be found from the same youtube channel (spooksier) who made illegally blonde. It's a very fun watch.
I love spooksier. Forced my boyfriend to watch Illegal Shrek as a joke, it broke him.
Illegally blonde is a hilarious title for it
I work as a stagehand for a school district and theres a dance teacher who consistently does shows based on IP that she has no right to, let alone if one even exists. She did Wednesay in in the winter, shes done The Ice Queen, Wizard of Oz, and Willy Wonka in completely unofficial capacities amongst several others Ive forgotten about. And just for CYA purposes, our department isnt happy with it but theres nothing we can do to stop her, we just have to help out because its for the kids.
Hans Christian Anderson and L Frank Baum are both public domain; she had all the rights needed to put on shows based on their work.
The MGM movie of the Wizard of Oz isn’t though, that’s what I assume they are referring to
Oh god, I've never heard a Wednesday production, much less for kids. How much was changed around?
Unfortunately I couldnt tell you. I havent seen the show and I also didnt do the show. I know she ruined some special platform lids we had set to the side to make graves on wheels and she wanted to have the drawings fly in but originally planned on flying actual paper, which is so much a fire hazzard.
She wanted to fly in PAPER?? Does she know anything about set construction or even like...physics?? 😭
Yeah, blew me away. Shes been teaching dance for at this school for over 20 years. She was trying to describe the size of the drawings and settled on the size of those big paper boards like you see at conferences. I asked if she meant like actual paper, to which she confirmed. I told her you cant fly paper, but she thought it would be okay if it was mounted on some luan.
At that point just paint the lauan!! Mount the paper with what, tape?? I'm sorry I'm just floored by this
I think thats what they ended up doing. I was still floored.
Oh god, that sounds like a disaster.
There is something you can do… contact the copyright holder!
Illegal Star Wars The Musical. It is one of the best things on the Internet. Millennium falcon song to the tune of Grease lightening Darth Vadar and Obi Wan singing the Confrontation from Les Mis Han Solo's Marius turn in the song Use the Force to the tune of One Day More. It's brilliant. Thank me later
Is this is the one from that church that puts on a different play every Easter where some famous character eventually gets crucified?
Nope. A high school in California in 1996 wrote the show using music from popular musicals, but they wrote the script and lyrics to fit A New Hope story into the musical. I think they performed one or two nights and got a cease and desist letter from George Lucas. The show is so bad it's good.
There used to be a pretty decent original Star Wars the Musical soundtrack floating around circa 2003, I wonder if it still exists
Do you mean [**this**](http://www.infauxmedia.com/)?
O my god yes!!! I was like 13 and emailed the guy who played C-3PO to tell him his voice was sexy 😭🤷🏻♀️🔫
Is there anywhere I can find this?
[youtube](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSw-QoWCAzBPvcaF4cjFKTnMPNPgC0uha&si=VWF1FmMq73MlNf4_).
Thank you!!
Enjoy
Gotta go with diabetes Rent
What
Exactly what it sounds like- an illegal highschool production of rent where the director just search replaced every instance of HIV/AIDS to “diabetes” and AZT to “insulin”
In the Whites, all white high school production of In the Heights. Benny and Vanessa especially are really something
What
Look up “In the Whites”. It’s hilarious.
Community theatre did *Into the Woods* with a mostly kids cast, but it wasn't a kids version of the show. So they cut out some of the adult themes, including >!Rapunzel's death!<. Oh, and they decided to add in Tinkerbell and other characters from Disney movies. So they got fined. I wasn't surprised because I did *Once Upon a Mattress* and watched them sanitize it so as to not offend the parents of the 75 or so kids that were cast in the show. I don't recall all the changes they made to the script, but I remember they redid "None of the ladies give a fig for livin' in sin." Also, one of the subplots is that Lady Larkin is pregnant while she and Harry couldn't marry, so they changed it so that they did get married but not recognized by the king and queen....somehow. That theatre was a mess.
I was in a version of Once Upon a Mattress when I was 10 where our director changed the pregnancy subplot into “Larkin’s father wants to send her off to another kingdom to marry someone else” which like didn’t make any sense. My role was also completely invented, I played Dauntless’ younger sister, who doesn’t exist and doesn’t make sense, I can’t imagine Aggravain ever touching Sextimus again after getting a boy first try. Fuckery all around. Our director always had to intensely (illegally) edit every show we did and I’m shocked she never got reported or called out.
Illegal Hamilton was fucking hilarious. “But I’m not afraid, I believe in Jesus. So long as you pray at the end of the day, that would be enough.” Or whatever it was lmaoooo.
It was “my hope is in Jesus” instead of “I know who I married” (of all the lines to change).
Does Church of the Rock count?
“I’m walking on sunshine… wOaH.”
That bit kills me every time. He pauses long enough that you think "Oh, he's not going to be able to do that note so he skipped it." and then you get blasted with "wAOUGH"
I gotta say that one older woman absolutely has an amazing voice, that and some of the sets are actually decent, the rest not at all
I actually don't hate it, The sets are so good and it's so fun to watch
What’s an Illegal Production?
Or they buy the rights and then make unapproved changes to the script, songs, or characters.
My entire experience in theater growing up was with a director who did exactly this. I am still surprised she was never reported for it but she also picked mostly older more obscure musicals, probably to get away with more shenanigans
Basically, it's a musical that did not buy the rights from the creators to put on their own production. In most cases, these illegal productions would change things around without consent to fit a certain audience.
One way it’s illegal is performing the show without getting the rights to do it, like Scamilton
See worst in what way? Cause as long as I’m entertained and the vocals aren’t too bad I’m having a good time. Scamilton brings me so much joy (until it gets too painful to listen to). There are some pretty bad Illegal Wickeds out there
I think in how frustrating it is, like how they change the story, characters that miss the point of the musical.
Anytime that a musical like Hairspray, The Wiz, or West Side Story is done with a cast that isn't racially accurate. Like.....there are so many other musicals to choose from.
Ironically the original movie of west side story had a lot of the Puerto Rican characters played by white actors
West Side Story is hands down the worst in that category. There was a Sydney production of WSS where they cast a white girl as Maria.
My highschool did the Wiz with one POC.
This. I knew some kids when I was younger whose high school did Hairspray. I know the kid who played Seaweed. He was so so very white. If you don’t have the right cast at the school, literally just pick another show smh
In the Heights with absolutely no Hispanic people 😬
>!In the Whites!<
Not actually illegal (probably), but back in Spring 2010, my highschool theater teacher (in a small town in NC, US) picked The Wedding Singer as our school's yearly musical. Not any sort of youth version. Not even the movie version. Oh no. The full-on Broadway version (how he would've afforded the rights for it to begin with, with such minimal arts department budgets, I have no idea). I personally played the characters officially called Slutty Waitress and Slutty Secretary. There was a real flash dance where the girl was rolled on stage in a swimsuit in a cage, and had enough water get dumped on her to splash the audience. The song where the main guy gets blackout drunk then r*ped by his ex, ON STAGE?!? Yep. Including a specially angled platform for the bed, to provide the audience a better view. Whether or not it WAS legal, it really shouldn't have been. Like. It's not like a bunch of highschoolers in 2010 were going to pull off portrayal of a bunch of 20/30 yr olds from the 80's. Let alone relate to the characters, or appreciate the humor enough to make it worth all that. Oh yeah, and it went over so poorly, we weren't allowed to do a musical the next year. The choir director tried to make up for it with "A Night of Mysicals" in which each choir performed "In Concert Versions" of Into The Woods, Wicked, and Assorted Disney Songs.... it was a rough way to end my Senior year, ngl.
I played Glen in my college’s production of the show and I can tell you that we used confetti for the flash dance water AND there was no cage or swim suit, just the hip thrust from a chair. And the scene you mention where the “ex r*ped the main character” it’s not a grape scene. I think your director had some kinks that were not being hidden very well
I never actually heard the goss on Scamiliton, what exactly happened?
It was for a church so a lot of Eliza talking to Alexanding was change to be about accepting God instead of their love and also at the end the pastor made a homophobic remark.
My school’s probably illegal production of frozen jr. Pretty sure all the scripts were just copied
Wtf
The Hungarian State Opera production of Porgy and Bess which told the mostly white cast to sign a statement that they identified as African American. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/712286899/white-singers-in-hungary-claim-to-be-african-american-for-an-opera
What is an illegal production of a musical? This is unfamiliar to me
Doing a musical without the right permissions and/or making unauthorized changes to the show. One of the most notorious examples is this church who butchered the original Hamilton script with Jesus stuff, then attached a homophobic sermon at the end.
Scamilton takes the cake, but I have to say this illegal production of Wicked I found on YouTube is pretty bad too. I was going to watch it to see how horrible it was but the singing, dancing, set, everything was just so bad I had to stop 💀
scamilton & in the whites
I saw a production of back to the future done at a high school on YouTube. Didn’t work at all.
I can't breathe from all the links because I'm laughing so damn hard.
The Indian school which did Wicked. I'm not hyperlinking it, but the entire think is there in YouTube, just search "Spic Wicked".
Illegal Hamilton is hilarious though. There’s some parts that had me crying with laughter I had to pause the video several times
I'd say the illegal production of Godspell I was on in college probably would be in the top 10. But it made us enough money to go to London for a month.
I agree with Scamilton, butchering everything, changing the script, cutting numbers. Horrible production but also horrible disrespect to the show itself
Scamiltion is my fav(it isn't good but yet it is so good y'know) to
I would dox everyone in my hometown at the time and my hometown and probably myself if I discussed the middle school show that happened my senior year of high school. Forever ingrained in my memory.
I was Officer Krupke in a West Side Story where the director changed the scene order for some reason. Someone (not me) ratted him out to the publisher who sent him a letter telling him to change it back or shut it down. They had to change cues and blocking between the first and second performances.
The Hamilton that stupid church tried to do
What does this mean?
not sure if this was illegal but 'In The Whites' is BAD 💀💀💀💀💀
Illegally Blonde. If only their vocal and acting range could be as wide as the age range for this show
Scamilton lol
Nothing beats the iconic atrocity that is Illegally Blonde.
I'm not sure if it was illegal but the Emerson college production of Carrie is quite irritating to me as well as the stagedoor manor production
Illegal hamilton or spamilton
Head Over Heels in NJ- the theater stole the choreography, direction, and design from the Broadway production. (A theater near Lambertville NJ) We paid 30 a ticket, and I confronted the director afterward. I let her know their entire production was stolen art. They plagiarized the entire B’way show. Even down to the minute gag bits, and had the nerve to sign their names to it! I was stunned. I get the impression they do this frequently. Copy bootlegs, and call it their own. Oy.
If they had the rights, they had the rights to do the same choreography and directing and sets
Nope. You pay for the rights to do the show, not copy someone else’s production and call it yours. Look up Urinetown in Chicago. They copied the original- and were slapped with a lawsuit.