Hamilton On Disney+ Is A Big Deal - But It Shouldn’t Be
It’s already been over two months since Disney+ introduced the world to its live recording of Hamilton, a show that really needs no introduction at this point. The professional recording dropped to the platform on July 3rd, and consisted of footage from three performances of the original Broadway cast in June of 2016. The release was originally slated for a theatrical run in 2021 until the whole pandemic thing happened and Disney acknowledged that cinemagoing is a (temporarily) extinct art, and capitalising off of people’s quarantine boredom is probably a thrifty move. For as much of a no-brainer this sort of release seems, Broadway recordings of this kind are few and far between in the name of upholding live-show integrity. But, strangely enough, thanks to COVID-19, we’re reconsidering the ways in which we engage with art, and we’re starting to see changes which (likely accidentally) break this kind of status quo, with the potential to begin deconstructing Broadway’s elitism and inaccessibility as a whole. And personally, I think that’s pretty cool.
Broadway is undoubtedly the centre of the musical theatre world, with any successful musical finding time for a run or two in any of the theatres on the scene. However, this epicentre of theatre is infamously inaccessible at best for a myriad of reasons. Not only can tickets for popular shows reach staggering highs of over $1,000 per seat, but for fans who live overseas this cost only climbs higher when adding airfare and hotel fees (not to mention the semantics involved in finding time to take a potentially intercontinental trip which happens to coincide with the dates of the performance you’re trying to catch). In conclusion, Broadway is only concerned with catering to a specific audience: one affluent enough, and local enough, to attend.
And while many of the musicals which find success on the stages of Broadway end up on regional or international tours, this brings new problems to the table. Firstly, the guessing game of whether or not your favourite musical will come to your country is a depressing one, take it from someone who has to wait years to even get the chance to see new shows. And even if luck taps you, it’s with a steel baseball bat, as no matter where in the world you are, theatre tickets are anything but cheap. Not to mention that while touring musicals’ casts are often great, this is not a guarantee. I’ve seen enough subpar performances on the stage of my definitely-not-world-renowned hometown theatre to be able to attest to this. I’ll never forgive the inexplicable trend of shoving C-list pop stars into musical theatre roles and claiming it’s ‘good casting’.
But now, with Disney+ and Hamilton playwright Lin Manuel-Miranda coming to some sort of agreement to release Hamilton’s original Broadway cast recording for general consumption, they’re making a risky, yet calculated move. While Hamilton is not the first musical to see a professionally shot broad release, the market for such content has been steadily dwindling over the years, preceding the rise of a new answer to Broadway’s exclusionary nature: bootlegging.
Bootlegging is the internet’s answer to Broadway’s tendency to turn a blind eye to the majority of theatre fans - and honestly, who can blame them? Bootlegging, the act of illegally recording theatre performances for distribution with other theatre fans, has become somewhat of an art form in recent years. These communities can be found on social media sites such as Tumblr and Reddit, and have evolved into something surprisingly complex, complete with their own economy of trade, terminology, and hierarchies. While some sell bootlegs for (usually a negligible) monetary gain, most are content with trading bootlegs for ones of an equal rarity. There’s a sense of wholesome camaraderie in those circles which is refreshing on sites usually so bogged down with negativity.
While the shoddy camera and audio quality which many of these recordings bolster can be migraine-inducing, it’s easy to see the allure. Many who engage with these communities have little to no chance of ever seeing their favourite shows live, and are quite frankly neglected and alienated from partaking in the art form which they love. For legal reasons, I will clarify I have definitely never partaken in bootlegs myself, and would never advocate for illegal activities. Ahem.
Manuel-Miranda has been outspoken in the past regarding his dislike of Bootlegs, claiming that “[Bootleggers are] taking money out of our pocket by going to one of the sites where you can get anything we ever wrote for free”. While piracy is bad, artists deserve payment, and we should all be good, law-abiding citizens, Manuel-Miranda’s words still seem somewhat hollow coming from a man with an estimated $80 million net worth whose show has been known to charge $1,150 per ticket. Not too great a look.
In this respect, Hamilton on Disney+ is somewhat of a double-edged sword. The release acknowledges the wider horizon of Broadway fans, an objectively unremarkable feat (the bar is incredibly low) but still one rare enough to warrant celebration, and also caters directly to bootleggers. In Manuel-Miranda’s own words re: bootlegging, “I'm grateful and glad you want to hear it, I want you to hear it right.”. Whether intentional or not, Manuel-Miranda and Disney+ have stopped treating bootlegging as a blight on the theatre world, but as an untapped market. Is it symptomatic of late capitalism that we’re rejoicing at the idea that we can get the opportunity to complete our role as consumers? Probably. But I’ll take the minimal cost of a cinema ticket or streaming platform over a quick thousands of pounds trip to America any day. And with new releases come new audiences - ones who aren’t necessarily affluent or American.
While the logistics of arranging such recordings of musicals may appear expensive and time-consuming to the outsider, in reality this sort of theatre recording is standard practice, and has been since the 1970’s. The finished recordings just hardly ever see the light of day. The New York Public Library has been meticulously creating professional recordings of both Broadway and Off-Broadway performances for decades, having amassed over 5,000 recordings of musicals, plays and other such works in that time. However, the norm for procedures of this kind is to squirrel the footage away for archival purposes only, and so the Library sits on an amazing, unseen backlog. Obviously, there are likely a number of hurdles with issues of licensing and such if this footage were to be released, but it’s been done before- what’s stopping it from happening again?
What Disney+ and Lin Manuel-Miranda’s release of Hamilton effectively yells out to other theatre-makers on Broadway is: if record-breaking, Tony award-winning pop culture phenomenon Hamilton can release professionally shot recordings to worldwide audiences, what’s your excuse for not doing the same?
Works cited:
Gordon Cox, ‘Hamilton’ Ticket Prices Hit $1,150 During Holiday Week, Variety, https://variety.com/2017/legit/news/hamilton-ticket-prices-1202648756/
Michael Gioia, Throw Down! Lin-Manuel Miranda Responds to Tumblr Post Seeking Illegal Hamilton Bootleg, Playbill, https://www.playbill.com/article/throw-down-lin-manuel-miranda-responds-to-tumblr-post-seeking-illegal-hamilton-bootleg-com-345407
Lin Manuel Miranda Net Worth, Celebrity Net Worth, https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/lin-manuel-miranda-net-worth/#:~:text=Lin%2DManuel%20Miranda%20Net%20Worth%20and%20Salary%3A%20Lin%2DManuel,net%20worth%20of%20%2480%20million.
About the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, The New York Public Library, https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/theatre-film-and-tape-archive
