It seems the the Book of Mormon is one of the first Broadway musicals to receive the popular pirate treatment. As of yesterday, there was a bootleg version of the show floating around the sharing sites complete with instructions on how to improve your watching experience.
A bootlegger shot the show in March, 2011 on a video camera, thereby assigning it the BROADWAYCAM moniker – a CAM being a video shot surreptitiously by a pirates. Ironically, one could say that the rise of bootlegging came with the recording and distribution of live shows by audio-savvy bootleggers, leading to the regency of the Grateful Dead and other jam bands. Thus far, however, Broadway shows have been immune to this kind of wholesale theft although I suspect the next show to get this treatment will be that Spiderman musical.
To be fair, Book of Mormon is a perfect storm of pirate-able performance. The provenance, the hype, and the creators all make this a must-see in the geek set and the fact that tickets are sold out and that the only performance in New York will encourage folks to download it. While I doubt Cats or Mama Mia! will ever get a bootleg, I’m surprised the Monty Python musical didn’t show up as a shaky cam on the Interwebs a few years back.
