Justin McElroy talking about accessibility in live theatre (June 9, 2019)
“Art is happening everywhere all of the time” but an awful lot of it seems to only ever happen in New York and London, doesn’t it?
Unless your enjoyment of theatre is based in the idea that you get to do it and The Poors don’t and that’s why it’s fun for you, how does other people getting to experience recordings of it make it worse? Like why would anybody be against that. “Oh it’s better in person” yeah and concerts are often more fun than listening to CDs, so what? There’s absolutely no reason why people in other places and circumstances shouldn’t get to experience art.
“Theatre is ephemeral” Yeah, and even if it’s recorded, there will be dozens or hundreds of performances of it which aren’t. One recording doesn’t stop those other experiences being ephemeral.
Seeing theatre in person is generally better than watching a recording, but watching a recording is infinitely never getting to see something at all.
















