Illegal Bootlegs Can’t Match Magic of Wicked

What do you do about YouTube?  That is the question plaguing those in charge of popular shows of Broadway and other productions.  There are numerous bootleg videos from the shows put up on the website, including Wicked.  There are clips from when Kristin Chenoweth was Glinda and Idina Menzel was Elphaba despite a warning at the beginning of the shows not to record anything.  With camera technology getting better and better, stage shows are now betting involved in the fight that film has been in for years.  Spokeswoman for the Actors’ Equity Association, Maria Somma, told Nelson Pressley, “We’re there to protect the actors and their images. The problem is, it goes back up.”

Somma also said that the association has had some success getting sites like YouTube and Google to take the videos down, but it is an almost never ending battle.  The theatre does have one advantage over films that are bootlegged, however.  While a bootlegged version of the movie is generally just a lower quality version of the original, a video of a show does not give fans the same magical feeling like being there.  The theatre will always own their unique atmosphere.  See the magic yourself by getting Wicked tickets from StubHub.com.

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