I realized that I never really completed my comments about researching shows without YouTube and the internet, so I decided I should wrap that up.
In 1995, I interpreted "Angels in America" - both "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika" in the space of 7 days. Each part of the show is about 3.5 hours long. Both plays are intensely political, religious and personal plays and they required quite a bit of research. We learned a lot about the Mormon religion, about Judaism, AIDS in the early 1980s.
One of the things I remember most from that show was translating a prayer from Hebrew. I drove down to the Multnomah County Library and spent part of the afternoon there, then I went to Powell's and collected a big bunch of books to help me with the translation. I toted them to the coffee shop and spent the remainder of the afternoon there. It was a lot of time and energy and a lot of work. I loved it.
Now, I can go onto the Internet to find translations, to research concepts I'm unfamiliar with, to watch videos of the shows. Apparently, MTV showed "Legally Blonde: The Musical" in its entirety and now I can watch it on the internet. It is immensely helpful to have the opportunity to hear the dialogue, to see the show, to know the sequencing of the pieces, which, normally, we don't see until 2 days before we interpret. That can create some PANIC, but now I don't have to worry as much.
It is hard to believe how much the world has evolved sometimes. And sometimes, it is hard to believe how little we have...
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