"to democratise theatre"

Theatre Having been wilfully trying to narrow my interests in the hopes of some sanity, I missed this, as John Wyver suggests, game changing article from Michael Billingham about filmed theatre:

"It's not quite the same as National Theatre Live, where cinemagoers vicariously attend a single performance. Digital's Ghosts, I'm told, was shot over three successive evenings during the show's run at the Trafalgar Studios. But, whatever the process, the result is to democratise theatre. It's not just that the performance can be seen worldwide. The key point is that everyone now has the best seat in the house."

As ever there are some wilfully stupid comments from people who clearly live in London and already have access to this material and can't appreciate what it must be like for those of us everywhere else in the world who wouldn't otherwise. There is of course the extra ring of people who would also like to see blu-ray releases or streaming access to the NT Live material, now that it has been filmed and there are HD copies in the archive, but that's a different battle.