October saw the UK release of the Hadestown pro-shot , and while it’s not the first musical to get this treatment, it’s certainly one of the strangest. Next to Normal or Hamilton? Sure. And if Six isn’t a conventional film, then it wasn’t exactly a conventional musical either. But a show like Hadestown which is its own historical record that painstakingly recreates itself night after night, always with the hope of a happier ending, would traditionally have been a harder sell.
But then, we’re not in a pre-Hadestown world. Films have always been indebted to theatre. After (and even partly before) the Covid shutdown, theatre-based streaming services like NTatHome and Marquee.tv have exploded in popularity; YouTube hosts a whole cottage industry of “slime tutorials” (bootleg recordings); and with cinema’s faith in movie musicals at an all time low, more and more producers are prioritising less costly pro-shots. Indeed, part of the issue here is that ‘recording’ as a term is so broad that there’s little sense of how to think about them.
Of course, accessibility is relevant. Seeing a particular show doesn’t just mean meeting the rising ticket prices — it often means meeting rising transport costs to and from London, New York, or wherever the production may be; shows rarely play Sheffield when they can play cities which are “close enough”. If I’d wanted to see Gianmarco Soresi on his recent UK tour, I’d need to get to Liverpool on an awkward Wednesday weeknight. Proshots and bootlegs make shows easily or even freely accessible – an attractive prospect for students.
There’s also a historical merit to recordings. The fandom around Heathers materialised entirely around bootlegs, and to this day the best recording of Assassins is a professionally recorded student production uploaded to a lead’s personal YouTube channel. In fact, where many professional productions’ are reluctant to record their show, student theatre societies are eager, including Sheffield Uni’s own SUTCo and USLES (SUPAS’s hire contracts rarely permit recordings). It’s easy to think of professional recordings as a complicated process, often requiring an entirely distinct director, but many fans are willing to watch bootlegs filmed from the stalls. The bar for official pro-shots is accordingly quite low.
That said, there are pitfalls. Many argue that no recording can capture the live experience of theatre without compromise, and in concrete terms this is perhaps true. Any bootlegger, and to a lesser extent professional videographers, must weigh up the benefits of having a recording against the cost of removing themselves (and the audience around them) from the theatrical experience, which they presumably spent money on. Perhaps that cost is worth it to many, but to the actors? Entering someone’s place of work to film them without their knowledge is already questionable, especially when that work requires an actor to show themselves at their most vulnerable, emotional and exposed, sometimes literally.
Granted, these issues are a function of necessity, and better resources might eliminate the need for bootlegs. But in an era where art is often treated as a commodity to be upsold, used to train AI, or deleted from existence if it doesn’t meet arbitrary metrics – is this what we want for theatre?
Just as Spotify’s shadier practices drove many to physical media, issues with filming and distributing pro-shots drive many to bootlegs. Yes, perhaps it would be more ethical to support local theatre, but London won’t stop being our national cultural capital any time soon. Local theatre can only do so much.
Like Hadestown, there’s a pleasingly populist intent behind bootlegging, a refusal to conform to capitalist structures that give our bread and circuses to those who keep their heads low. Until access to theatre changes hugely, recordings — legal or not — aren’t going anywhere.
