(Images: http://www.playbill.com/production/hamilton-richard-rodgers-theatre-vault-0000014104 (right) https://www.touretown.com/event/heathers-the-musical/10544/ (left))

Monday, September 23, 2019 will go down as a tragic day in history. It was the day I lost the flash drive that stored my most prized possession: the Hamilton bootleg I managed to snag off YouTube before it was banished from every corner of the internet.  

There’s a special place in my heart for musical bootlegs. It was the only way I got to see the original Off-Broadway cast of Heathers: the Musical or the original Broadway cast of Waitress. Without bootlegs, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with or been able to properly hate on some of the latest shows (cough, cough Dear Evan Hansen) to take the stage because theatre – specifically Broadway – is inaccessible for the general population. As a college student who gets excited about the discounted paninis in the dining hall, I’m better off listening to the soundtrack recording off Spotify. 

This isn’t to say I feel entitled to experience free musicals simply because I can’t afford to see them in person. There’s a reason why Broadway tickets are so expensive: the sheer amount of time, effort, and talent that goes into putting on eight shows a week is unparalleled anywhere in the world. The actors, writers, costume designers, makeup artists, choreographers and everyone else involved in a show’s production deserve to be compensated for their craft, probably even more so than they currently do.  

The dilemma of whether bootlegs are moral is the natural question to ask. If I had no ability to see a Broadway musical in the first place, then no harm is done to the contributors of the musical because I would have no way to compensate them. However, is the very act of consuming art for free by means of illegally procuring a bootleg immoral in of itself? 

It is difficult to say. Some argue that because bootlegs are not “harming” the artist in any way, the act of recording and distributing them is amoral – that is, neither good nor bad. On the other hand, some say that the act of intellectual property theft is morally bad in that a random person is reaping the benefits of someone else’s hard work.  

In most cases, I believe bootlegs are morally acceptable when shows have ceased to run both on Broadway and national tours because the bootlegs would not be taking away potential audience members from in-person shows. Sometimes, bootlegs can even boost a show’s following after its initial run, prompting a revival that may not have occurred otherwise or a cult following as evidenced by Heathers. 

It’s ultimately up to individuals to decide whether bootlegs are something they condone. As a musical fan, there are ways we can support artists in a smaller way such as going to local, small scale productions and supporting our favorites over social media (or blogging about it 😉).