Since they released Hamilton, and since Broadway is gonna be closed till most likely March at least, now they can open up the fucking archives and stop sitting on decades of fully filmed and edited productions like a god damn dragons hoard

Here’s what happens when you open the archives:
- more people have access to professional theater therefore igniting more interest in it
- more shows that deserve revivals /get them/ and we don’t get another music man
- fuck you music man I fucking hate you

5,000 taped performances of productions and the only way to access them is in person in NYC at the archives themselves. It is open to the public (not currently obvs) but I don’t think any of it can actually be checked out or released, you have to watch it there. SAD.

https://catalog.nypl.org/search  use this to see if what you’re looking for is in the archives. It probably is.

A lot of ppl are asking for a Broadway streaming service, and there is one! BroadwayHD has a very small collection of musicals but really not much. But if the archives opened, they’d already have a site ready and available to start uploading the shows to.

My point is that we argue about how theater is inaccessible to most but we don’t actually do anything to change that. There’s so many legendary productions that are for “researchers only” that they’re just collecting dust. Education in the arts requires accessible resources.

Producers love to say “now more than ever, this show is important” and feel that their two year run on Broadway with ticket prices of 200 and up got the point across to enough people. If your work is actually important, let people who can’t afford it see it.

Anyways I’m muting this otherwise I’ll be thinking abt it all night thanks bye follow me or whatever!