While a book or movie has a way of hanging around, theater doesn’t. When a production ends, it’s done. Fortunately, there’s a way of meeting or revisiting a play or musical that doesn’t involve illegal recording or the risk of getting booted out mid-performance.
Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive (WAPAVA) offers the opportunity to view almost 1,000 recordings of local productions.
Its archives are a living record of something that might otherwise have disappeared. Founded singlehandedly by the late James “Jim” Taylor in 1993 to preserve live theater performances, WAPAVA is one of just three major continuous Actors’ Equity-approved video performance archives in America.