By Dani Kass

Law360 (January 7, 2021, 7:52 PM EST) -- When the COVID-19 pandemic brought live theater to an indefinite halt, entertainment attorney Doug Nevin had to dramatically shift his practice, starting with figuring out how to delay Broadway productions and then helping launch "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical."

Nevin, who has two Tony Award nominations under his belt for his producing work, runs the entertainment firm Nevin Law Group in New York City. He launched the firm in 2014 to focus on his love of theater after almost a decade doing mergers and acquisitions, largely at BakerHostetler.

He spoke with Law360 on Wednesday about how his work as counsel to theater producers had to change during the pandemic, what the future of theater will look like, and how he helped turn a musical spontaneously created by TikTok users honoring Disney's famous chef rat, Remy from "Ratatouille," into a full production for charity.

"Theater is typically something that happens in a specific space at a specific time, and you're either there or you're not; you either experience that moment or you don't," he said. "There's been something really interesting, where because of the manner in which content is being disseminated right now, you can be watching the same live performance or the same event all over in different countries, in different states, in different cities, all at the same time."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your practice like before the pandemic?

The vast majority of our work is in theater and live arts. We represent chiefly producers and productions. We've been production counsel to various Broadway productions, such as "What The Constitution Means To Me," "Slave Play," The Old Vic production of "A Christmas Carol" that was on Broadway last fall [and] the West End revival of "Gypsy."

We do anything from rights acquisitions — such as underlying rights to develop a property for the stage, as well as production rights in a stage play or musical — as well as development deals and development and production financing. We also provide support to London-based productions, which may have U.S.-based creative or financing elements, and assist with director and other creative team agreements, as well as any vendor or other commercial contracts related to live performance.

I imagine your practice has changed quite a bit in the past year.

To say that our business plan shifted after March 11 would be an understatement. The world shifted from underneath our feet.

How have you adjusted?

At the very beginning, a lot of it was the mechanics of shutting down, of pausing projects, of shifting dates for projects that were about to open or development steps that were about to happen. Then it became about the realization that we might be out for longer, so extending a lot of agreements, force majeure provisions, tolling option periods, so that production rights wouldn't expire while the industry was dormant.

Then it became: How can we continue to create while we can't gather? What can be done? How can it be done? Can virtual performances be done? Can projects be filmed inside venues in accordance with government regulations, but streamed to audience members? Or could performances be performed entirely online?

Those are really interesting questions, but they also presented a lot of legal implications. A production rights agreement that gives you a right to perform a play live in front of a living audience in a legitimate theater is different than the ability to disseminate a play over the internet. How do you structure those deals? What makes sense? What doesn't? What is a short-term fix versus what is perhaps a longer term modification?

You also started to see more content providers move online. For example, new distribution platforms like Broadway On Demand emerged. You've also seen live performance outside  — not so much in New York, but in other parts of the country and the world where government regulations allow it. So those are the kinds of conversations and the kinds of developments that we were a part of during the bulk of the year.

That continued with something like "Ratatouille." We also saw productions that we worked on live, like "What The Constitution Means To Me," being streamed through Amazon. It was a great example of bringing theater to audiences when audiences couldn't come to the theater.

And now we're really starting to talk about what does theater look like as we return. You're starting to see people get ready, slowly, to turn the lights back on. Obviously we're not there yet, but what does that look like?

What's the new status quo going to be?

I think that, in many ways, remains to be seen, which is daunting but also exciting.

It'll be interesting to see what the actual experience of going to the theater is like. How do venue staff, box office staff, concession staff, interact with theatergoers? How are cast and crew's behavior modified? Will some of these things we've seen in terms of digital transition and live captures augment the theatergoing experience going forward?

Also, I think it's going to be really interesting to come back to a theater that needs to be more inclusive and more diverse, and more honest about the challenges that we face and how you use art, particularly American drama and American musical theater, to engage, to challenge, to communicate, to bring together.

This summer, TikTok users started creating songs and dances for a musical version of the 2007 Disney-Pixar film "Ratatouille," about a rat named Remy who becomes a chef at a restaurant in Paris. It caught producers' attention and was turned into a scripted benefit show released on TodayTix, with a cast including Tituss Burgess, Adam Lambert and Wayne Brady, alongside other major Broadway names. It was available online for a few days in January and raised more than $1 million for the Actors Fund.

You were counsel for the producers of "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical." What was that like?

Like many members of the theater community, we'd started to take notice of the organic creation of "Ratatouille" musical elements on TikTok, where TikTok users in their homes were creating musical moments and design elements, et cetera, for this sort of a musical version of "Ratatouille."

For those folks working in the theater who are sitting at home not able to create and not able to do what we do every day, it was really thrilling and inspiring that theater was part of the conversation, even while theater as we know it wasn't happening.

Greg Nobile, who runs Seaview Productions, was very excited by what he was seeing, and the raw talent, the enthusiasm, the passion, for "Ratatouille" as a property and for musical theater as a form of entertainment and expression. He and I, and our colleagues, started having conversations about what might be involved in trying to provide a support system around that.

Greg was able to partner with our friends at Disney who control the property, and think of a construct that would allow the TikTok "Ratatouille" artists to create this piece, to share it with an even broader audience, and to do it in a way that could benefit the Actors Fund, which is supporting so many in need during this time of almost complete unemployment in our industry.

It was one of the happiest experiences I've had. In every respect.

To know that people from all over the world were able to watch this and share it with everyone in their household at a time where theaters were closed was really an enriching and important experience.

--Editing by Nicole Bleier.

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