The inaccessibility of theater in an age where we have the tools to easily make it accessible is so deeply frustrating and infuriating and genuinely upsetting when i think about the state of the art form as a whole. I can understand wanting people to show up to a performance while it's running obv it's a job and you need to make money to stay open and pay your workers somehow, but there's absolutely zero reason not to record it and release it once it's over so that people who can't physically see the show in person due to cost/disability/it's just too far away/etc still have a chance to experience wonderful art! Why should i not have access to the professional recording of a play performed in 2014 when it's 2022, the run is long over and will not lose money if i get the chance to see it now rather than missing out simply because i was on a different continent and in middle school at the time. People hem and haw about a "dying art form" while making it as inaccessible as possible to the vast majority of people on earth when it could be literally the same as movies being released in theaters and then later on DVD/streaming. Movie theaters still exist Netflix hasn't killed them yet, live performance cannot ever fully be replaced and people who can see them still will, there's no reason things like stage plays, musicals, operas, ballets, etc can't do the same except for elitism. The cultural loss of not recording live performances in this day and age boils my blood, the art form is only "dying" because you'd rather let it die than change an inch.
