rumpelstiltskinned:

vampireapologist:

soulessobsession1:

vampireapologist:

vampireapologist:

“if your favorite musical is wicked don’t call yourself a theatre fan”

you mean the most accessible, affordable musical available for the most people to experience? but okay, fine, let’s go your way. how about we make more musicals available by doing official live recordings and putting them on netflix & hulu? in movie rentals? redbox? literally any streaming site? the production would make more money, and bootlegging issues would decrease, AND more people would fall in love with theatre.

“no??? you can’t TRULY capture the life of a stage production on film. doing that would be pointless and degrade the production everyone worked so hard on. no recordings allowed.”

ah, okay, i see now. You hate poor people and desperately need a platform that allows you to feel some semblance of superiority while looking down upon everyone for not enjoying something you deliberately deny them access to. glad we got that cleared up everyone go ahead and take five

this isn’t an exaggeration. i’ve been fortunate enough to grow up in the theatre, both acting in and attending shows, and I was a theatre major in days of yore

and something I’ve often noticed is that so many people deliberately and openly try to make the theatre inaccessible, even if that just means being openly unwelcoming to people they think didn’t belong.

all the time I listened to adults complain about the way people “dress these days” to see a show. If you dared to show up in anything but an evening gown, your toddler son wearing anything but a little suit, you didn’t deserve to be in those nosebleed seats you could barely afford.

what really struck me about this, is that these people pretend to care so much about the arts. Oh, the arts! They love them! They adore them! They donate thousands of dollars a year to them!

But it’s all somewhat performative, isn’t it? They wouldn’t dare support the arts until they have their images perfected. They have to look a certain way before they can publicly and financially support this thing they claim to love.

Meanwhile, the people showing up in jeans or sweatpants probably used up all the money they had for leisure for the year, and I do mean that, for a chance to experience a live performance once.

And they don’t care how they look once they get there.

because all they care about, is the fucking arts.

I respect all this but I think it’s respectful to be dressed nicely when seeing someone perform

I did theatre on a professional level and I don’t care if you’re dressed in a potato sack. Performers usually can’t even see past the first few rows because of the lights. The most respectful thing you can do is pay for a seat and then show up and clap.

Theatre is expensive af, even to average income people. I’m not poor, but I can’t afford to go to a show more than once or twice a year (and that’s on a good year, mind you.)

Many people also don’t factor in the travelling expenses – a lot of theatre goers need to travel to see a show, so that’s money for a plane/bus/train ticket or gas money, plus food, plus hotel if you need to stay overnight.

Just as a reference: My trip to Vienna in October to see Tanz, including show ticket, travel and hotel expenses (but without food or anything else) was about 350-400 euros. And with the exception of the musical ticket, where I bought a relatively pricey one, I took the cheapest options on everything else.

So basically, yeah, I totally agree – shaming people for liking a show that’s more easily accessible to them is shitty (and oh god, don’t get me started on that whole “filming shows would hurt the theater industry/damage the show’s artistic integrity” nonsense.)