A week and a half ago, however, CMT lost the rights. Turns out that the national tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar," which had visited Fresno last year in a show that producers called the absolute-final farewell tour (yeah, right), decided it wants to return to the Saroyan Theatre in December. (How many times can Fresnans flock to the ever-aging Ted Neeley, who is now old enough to, um, be Jesus' father?) Because a national tour trumps a local production, CMT had to dump the show.

It will be staging "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, instead.

The technical details of the transaction get a little complicated, but it comes down to this: CMT has always in the past relied on "gentleman's agreements" with the companies that sell rights to shows. It doesn't actually pay the royalties -- which in this case were $5,000 -- until rehearsals begin. (It's a cash-flow thing.) That's never been a problem in the past. But the contract isn't ironclad until the royalties are paid in full.

Complicating matters is that Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals, the company that has the rights to "Superstar," has a longer blackout period than other licensing firms. Effectively it means that if a touring company wants to, it can block any local theaters from performing a show for up to a year prior. (Most other firms have six-month windows.)

The folks at CMT knew that there was a chance when they booked the show that the national tour of "Superstar" could decide to return to Fresno, but they figured that the time between the two scheduled runs was so far apart that the national tour folks wouldn't care. And the CMT folks figured, wrongly as it turned out, that they'd be able to make a case that this was a non-profit children's theater, so it wasn't offering much competition.

Wrong.

"I don't feel they did the right thing, but they had the right to block us," says CMT executive director Judy Stene.

So what's a company to do? Over a weekend, the staff searched for an alternative. It pitched the idea of doing "Joseph," which is also a Rodgers and Hammerstein title. Then director Eric Day and staff figured out a way to use the 32-member "Superstar" cast in "Joseph" instead.

"The hardest thing I had to do was tell the cast," Stene says.

It wasn't a completely easy fit, as you'd imagine. Some people who had starring roles in "Superstar" couldn't get the same kinds of roles in "Joseph." Still, Stene says, while some people in the cast left, most stayed.

There were some upset folks, to be sure. (I should know because I heard from one of them, albeit anonymously, who was concerned that the company did not follow the standard procedures and committed to a show without having it's all its I's dotted and T's crossed.)

There has been some talk of picketing the Saroyan production in December, which I have to say off the cuff doesn't sound like a very good idea.

As far as the procedure the company used to book the show, Stene says that the "Superstar" situation was an anomaly. And that the company is wiser for it.

"We've learned some things," she says. "We've learned that there are no such things as gentleman's agreements. We will never, ever again lose rights to a show."