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So I saw this post on Mastodon discussing how a lot of indie short films aren't really "preserved" in the sense of how a lot of online ppl think of media preservation (i.e. uploaded to a public YouTube/etc. video), which led to OP discussing what the Lost Media Fandom (TM) would think about these types of events. Which also led to a sub-discussion on how a lot of Lost Media Fans' (TM) motivation is more centred along the lines of "holy crap! it's That Thing I Saw Once In My Childhood, but in full this time!!" rather than what a lot of library/museum people do in terms of preserving literary/media artifacts.
Which kind of got me thinking about things in my childhood that I know for sure have no way to watch again. Back in the mid-aughts, my yeeyee backwoods elementary school sometimes had travelling theatre groups perform for us. Some of these productions were from established child-focused theatre groups in the area, but other ones were a bit more unknown. And these more unknown groups' productions tended to be a lot more fever-dreamy than the established ones. For instance, the one that really comes to mind was this retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but with the arc word "wandering" being fairly prominent. And it used up the entire stage in our gymnasium rather than being relegated to the back wall area. And there were these really weird full-body costumes, and a wholeass lighting setup instead of the gym lights being on for the whole thing. It was weirdly high budget for these visiting productions. And I CANNOT find anything about it because it took place long enough ago that the modern Internet either won't know what I'm talking about, or will feed me false AI-generated information.
And maybe that's just the nature of live theatre. It's something that's meant to be performed right in front of people, instead of being something pre-recorded you can look up any time. And yeah, there are people out there making "slime tutorials" for bigger-budget productions, but for some fuckass 30-minute-long-max assembly at a middle-of-nowhere elementary school? Unthinkable. Which means there is probably no info available about That Weirdass Theatre Production I Saw Once In My Childhood. And I guess I'm just gonna have to be ok with that.
Which does also kinda rub me the wrong way in some regards, because Current Interest (aka. Jinzou Ningen Kikaider) has had a lot of low-budget local performances run out of Hawai'i that I've been able to read about thru archived forum and Facebook posts... but only been able to see snippets of on YouTube. And none of them are the specific one I've been trying to track down, even though it happened in 2009 and therefore should theoretically be uploaded somewhere, even if it's on some channel with views in the single digits. But whatever. I guess I can't be fully bothered if it doesn't exist online, just because of the nature of live theatre. Even if I have to be denied Underappreciated Archblorbo Crumbs...
But yeah, if the greater Lost Media Fandom(TM) was more focused on theatre, I can only imagine what the search processes would look like.
Which kind of got me thinking about things in my childhood that I know for sure have no way to watch again. Back in the mid-aughts, my yeeyee backwoods elementary school sometimes had travelling theatre groups perform for us. Some of these productions were from established child-focused theatre groups in the area, but other ones were a bit more unknown. And these more unknown groups' productions tended to be a lot more fever-dreamy than the established ones. For instance, the one that really comes to mind was this retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but with the arc word "wandering" being fairly prominent. And it used up the entire stage in our gymnasium rather than being relegated to the back wall area. And there were these really weird full-body costumes, and a wholeass lighting setup instead of the gym lights being on for the whole thing. It was weirdly high budget for these visiting productions. And I CANNOT find anything about it because it took place long enough ago that the modern Internet either won't know what I'm talking about, or will feed me false AI-generated information.
And maybe that's just the nature of live theatre. It's something that's meant to be performed right in front of people, instead of being something pre-recorded you can look up any time. And yeah, there are people out there making "slime tutorials" for bigger-budget productions, but for some fuckass 30-minute-long-max assembly at a middle-of-nowhere elementary school? Unthinkable. Which means there is probably no info available about That Weirdass Theatre Production I Saw Once In My Childhood. And I guess I'm just gonna have to be ok with that.
Which does also kinda rub me the wrong way in some regards, because Current Interest (aka. Jinzou Ningen Kikaider) has had a lot of low-budget local performances run out of Hawai'i that I've been able to read about thru archived forum and Facebook posts... but only been able to see snippets of on YouTube. And none of them are the specific one I've been trying to track down, even though it happened in 2009 and therefore should theoretically be uploaded somewhere, even if it's on some channel with views in the single digits. But whatever. I guess I can't be fully bothered if it doesn't exist online, just because of the nature of live theatre. Even if I have to be denied Underappreciated Archblorbo Crumbs...
But yeah, if the greater Lost Media Fandom(TM) was more focused on theatre, I can only imagine what the search processes would look like.
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Date: 2026-10-19 10:04 am (UTC)From: