This year's Tony Awards had the highest ratings in fifteen years, and I'm sure that behind the scenes, studio executives are asking lots of questions. Why did so many people tune in? (Hamilton). Which of the many things that were new and interesting about this year's Tony Awards drew such an audience? (Hamilton). Will they be able to replicate that success in years to come? (No, because it was Hamilton).
As a commenter, I'm less interested in the answer to these questions (because I already know it was Hamilton) and more interested in the fact that many people I know were excited to see Hamilton's Tony performance specifically because they will likely have no other opportunity to see the original cast perform. Even setting aside the many factors that make it difficult or impossible for the average Broadway-loving American to see their favorite shows (namely, cost and distance, but mostly cost), Hamilton tickets are notoriously difficult to acquire because of the show's incredible reputation.
Accessibility has become an increasingly salient issue in the Broadway community. Aside from the fact that people on Broadway are creating amazing art that ought to be shared with the world, increased accessibility is necessary for Broadway's very survival. Many in the theater world have lamented theater's declining popularity, but who can blame modern audiences? A lot of people can't afford tickets to touring productions, or don't live in an area where they can easily access high-quality productions.
Luckily for the future of Broadway, there's an easy solution: film Broadway musicals. I'm not talking about movie versions of shows, which range from excellent (The Last Five Years) to questionable (Les Miserables, or, The One Where They Tried To Make Russell Crowe Sing), to downright incomprehensible (Bye Bye Birdie), and which often lose the inventive staging of the original or fall victim to casting choices based more on star power than vocal chops. I'm talking about film recordings of stage musicals. Distributing these would allow people who can't make it to the Great White Way to experience amazing shows, as well as boosting the popularity of said shows by making them available to the general public. Some purists might argue that the only right way to experience Broadway is live, as an audience member, but, again, for some, this is impossible, and a film version is significantly better than nothing.
I'm not alone in this. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has advocated for a film version of his show, and film versions of Phantom Of The Opera, Sweeney Todd, and more have been available for years. These are great steps in the right direction, but in order to increase accessibility, theater-goers need to push for more and more legal recordings of shows. As James Corden so beautifully pointed out in Tony opener, theater has incredible power to change lives. The only way we can inspire the next generation of James Cordens and Lin-Manuel Mirandas is by reaching out to them.
