Video archive in regional theatre

Just discovered there's a video archive for theatre in the DC area, called WAPAVA, that has been filming theatre productions since 1993! There are gems like the 2002 Sondheim festival at Kennedy Center (it had Sunday w/ Raul Esparza, Sweeney w/ Brian Stokes Mitchell, Company w/ John Barrowman, Night Music w/ Kristen Bell, Passion w/ Michael Cerveris, Merrily w/ Raul Esparza again), Little Dancer in 2012, The Highest Yellow in 2004 at Signature (an obscure LaChiusa musical starring Marc Kudisch as Vincent van Gogh, who knew there's a video of it!!!) and many more. On top of that, it's free and open to all. The only pain is that it's located in College Park, no easy public transportation, and the library seems to be open only on weekdays. For anyone who's interested, here's their website: http://www.wapava.org/index.php/search-data-base/

Which brought me to the question, are there more of those? Especially in cities with a prosperous theatre scene, like Chicago, Bay Area etc.

lachri5 said: "Just discovered there's a video archive for theatre in the DC area, called WAPAVA, that has been filming theatre productions since 1993! There are gems like the 2002 Sondheim festival at Kennedy Center (it had Sunday w/ Raul Esparza, Sweeney w/ Brian Stokes Mitchell, Company w/ John Barrowman, Night Music w/ Kristen Bell, Passion w/ Michael Cerveris, Merrily w/ Raul Esparza again), Little Dancer in 2012, The Highest Yellow in 2004 at Signature (an obscure LaChiusa musical starring Marc Kudisch as Vincent van Gogh, who knew there's a video of it!!!) and many more. On top of that, it's free and open to all. The only pain is that it's located in College Park, no easy public transportation, and the library seems to be open only on weekdays.For anyone who's interested, here's their website:http://www.wapava.org/index.php/search-data-base/

Jim Taylor, the founding director of WAPAVA, used to donate copies of some of his achive's videos (though not all of them) to the TOFT collection at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. In checking the NYPL catalog I see that 13 WAPAVA videos are at the library (including several from the 2002 Sondheim festival), and can be viewed in the TOFT screening room here in the city.

TOFT has a healthy amount of regional theater among their filmed holdings -- you can search their catalog to find out if they filmed a particular production.

I just searched on TOFT, indeed I found some contributed by WAPAVA. I even found a few that TOFT filmed in DC, that WAPAVA doesn't have lol. I guess the advantages of WAPAVA is that you don't need a academic reason to access, and of course depending on where you live, it may be closer.