Could it be -- is Broadway thwarting the UAF Theatre Department?

The UAF Theatre Department had to make a quick change Sept. 7 when a publishing company denied it the rights to perform Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter's award-winning play "The Homecoming" because of a planned Broadway production.

The refusal came a mere day before auditions for the play were scheduled.

David Mamat's "Oleanna" will open in its place Oct. 20.

"Changing shows in the beginning of the year is kind of scary," said theater department coordinator Maya Salganek. "But it's still going be a great show."

In her six years working for the theater department at UAF, Salganek has organized four to six plays a year.

Because of fiscal restraints she generally is unable to apply for production rights any sooner than the first couple weeks of the fall semester.

Still, she has never had a problem purchasing rights, she said.

Salganek applied for the rights for "The Homecoming" on Sept. 6.

The next day, the play's publishing company, Samuel French, responded with a fax stating "The Homecoming" was "currently not available."

"Please stop any plans for production at this time," the fax says, in bold letters.

Samuel French representative Melody Fernandez reiterated that the play was not available for other theaters.

"No schools or theater production companies can produce it," Fernandez said.

"This happens quite often with plays by authors like Pinter," she added.

After receiving the cease-and-desist letter, Slaganek looked online and discovered producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel had announced plans to do a revival of "The Homecoming" on Broadway.

No contact information was available for Richards or Frankel. Pinter's U.K. publisher, London-based Faber & Faber, had not responded to inquiries at press time.

Pinter, who received of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005 and lives in the United Kingdom, also couldn't be reached for comment.

Christopher Hudgins, chair of the English department at University of Nevada Las Vegas, is a good friend of Pinter and attended the ceremony in Stockholm at his invitation, even though Pinter was too ill to attend.

He said he was "shocked and amazed" to hear UAF couldn't put on the play.

Hudgins described "The Homecoming" as "a shocking story that violates expectations with ideas about power in relationships that are a struggle."

"The Homecoming" begins with the famous first line, "What have you done with the scissors?"

While the line yields no textual clues about the rest of the story, viewers soon discover a house of a seedy father with three equally low-life sons who lack a matriarchal figure and measure worth by virility.

Ruth, the wife of one of the sons, is drawn into their world.

Her husband abandons Ruth to fend for herself, and everyone in the family assumes she will turn to prostitution.

In the end, the men are left begging for her favor as she sits literally in the position of power, their father's chair.

Salganek said she felt bad for the students who were looking forward to "The Homecoming," which would have had a six-person cast.

Mamet's "Oleanna," originally scheduled for the spring, has only two roles.

"This is an educational theater," Salagnek said. "We're here to teach the students and their education is our first concern. They are the ones getting the short end of the stick."