This year, the large variety of Broadway and West End productions will be made available to the public through commercialized recordings. These recordings will be released in movie theaters and on streaming services for musical-theater-loving audiences; however, the commercialization of professional theater brings its rewards and consequences.
Shows such as “Hadestown,” “Suffs,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” and “SIX the Musical” will be or have already been recorded for streaming this year. “Hadestown” was filmed live in early March on the West End, which leads the original National Theatre and Broadway casts. “Suffs” was filmed in Jan. and will be released to PBS for streaming. “Merrily We Roll Along” was filmed in June and is now available to the public in the New York Public Library, though there is suspicion that the recording may be released on streaming services at some time. The rights to “SIX the Musical” were acquired by Universal Pictures and the performance was recorded to be released in U.K. movie theaters on April 6.
Even though the ability to view Broadway shows on the couch sounds enticing, commercializing musical theater is a dangerous game. By making these shows available to anyone paying one of the many streaming services available now-a-days, the prestige of Broadway and West End shows is lost through this medium.
Actors, technicians, and producers put their heart and soul into every live show they choose to take on. The cast and crews of every production spend months, if not years, attempting to create a show big enough to reach Broadway or the West End. Recording these productions and putting them on a streaming service that anyone paying $9.99 a month for can watch is disrespectful to the blood, sweat, tears, and money that goes into these plays and musicals.
However, at the same time, commercializing plays and musicals makes them vastly more accessible to anyone with a passion for viewing the performing arts. Seeing a Broadway or West End performance is immensely expensive. Not only are tickets to see professional productions hundreds of dollars, but other factors like travel need to be taken into consideration for those who do not live in New York or London. Recording these performances and putting them on streaming services allows plays and musicals to grow and expand their audience and appreciation.
Money and prestige are not the only factors in whether or not professional productions should be recorded. By recording plays and musicals a quicker rotation of shows occurs on Broadway and the West End. In New York there are about 40 Broadway theaters, about half of which are consistently filled with the ‘classics’ of modern Broadway.
Shows like “Hamilton,” “Hadestown,” “The Lion King,” or “Wicked” are Broadway shows that seem to have no end date in sight. That leaves about 20 theaters left, all of the theaters are being competed for by hundreds of new and upcoming shows. Some of the productions only have a few theaters available to them because of certain requirements that that particular show requires for the set and performance space.
All of this to say that getting to Broadway is difficult on all ends of the scale, as actors, technicians, directors, and producers. However, recording shows allows for productions to leave Broadway and West End theaters sooner, providing more available performance space to newer plays and musicals.
This same factor has its negatives too, though. By constantly rotating shows the already highly unstable world of professional theater becomes even less stable for actors and technicians. Many people looking to “make it” on Broadway are living in New York working multiple jobs trying to make enough to stay in a studio apartment with three other roommates. By recording and therefore speeding up the rotation of shows on Broadway and the West End, casts and crews of plays and musicals are being stripped of their jobs that they work so hard to earn before they’ve even begun to understand financial stability.
The future of Broadway and the West End has to be considered when such a large change could instigate either a detrimental or largely beneficial outcome to performing arts as a whole. The arts are alway shifting and changing, something that comes with an area that is predominantly reliant on creativity, so maybe Broadway has to shift, too.
