RENT Notes on the Production
Jonathan Larson’s Early Life
Jonathan Larson was born in White Plains, New York and attended Adelphi University, where he wrote his first musical Sacrimoralimmorality. After graduating in 1982, he moved to SoHo in New York City, where his life shared many similarities with the characters in RENT: living in a fourth floor walk-up apartment, throwing the keys out the window to let guests in, waiting tables, and hosting an annual “Peasants’ Feast” holiday potluck that was open to all.
In 1987, Larson’s childhood best friend Matthew O’Grady was diagnosed with HIV, and Larson began attending Friends in Deed meetings with O’Grady. After failing to secure the rights to create a musical based on George Orwell’s 1984, Larson adapted the material into a new musical called Superbia which won the 1988 Richard Rodgers Production Award and received a staged reading at Playwrights Horizons. Upon advice from Stephen Sondheim, his mentor, Larson decided to focus on music exclusively and created a “rock monologue” called 30/90. Based on his own life, the piece was later re-titled tick, tick…BOOM!
The Creation of RENT
In 1989, Playwrights Horizons recommended Larson to Billy Aronson, a playwright looking for a composer to collaborate on a new musical based on Puccini’s La Boheme. Together, they wrote “Rent,” “Santa Fe,” and “I Should Tell You.” Larson named the show RENT, referring both to the monthly payment for living and the second definition “to tear apart with violence.” In 1991, with Aronson’s permission, Larson continued developing the musical on his own. In 1993, a demo tape of RENT was accepted by the New York Theatre Workshop, which hosted a staged reading of the show on June 17, 1993.
In 1994, Larson received a Richard Rodgers Development Grant of $45,000 to pay for the NYTW workshop production of RENT. Jeffrey Sellar, a producer who had seen tick, tick…BOOM!, became a silent commercial producer of RENT, pushing for an Off-Broadway production. In May 1995, Lynn Thomson was hired as a dramaturg to help Larson work on the plot and characterization. The workshop had showed what areas needed development, particularly in the characters of Maureen and Joanne.
To achieve as much Lower East Side realism as possible, the production team hired creative designers from downtown for the sets, costumes, lights, sound and choreography. Many of the costumes came from the wardrobes of cast members, and the scrap metal used to create the set came from a New Jersey junk yard. Four months of auditions were held, with over 1000 auditioners before the final fifteen were cast. Daphne Rubin-Vega and Anthony Rapp from the original workshop were brought back to reprise their roles as Mimi and Mark. The night before the first rehearsal in December 1995, Larson held a Peasant’s Feast for the cast and production team, explaining, “This show is about my friends, so you’re all playing my friends.”
On January 21, 1996, Larson passed out in the back of the theatre while “What You Own” was being rehearsed. The hospital diagnosed him with food poisoning. On January 23rd, he was taken to the hospital again complaining of chest pains, which the doctors attributed to stress. The next night was the final dress rehearsal, and the show’s first full run through. The audience loved it, and Larson was pleased. A reporter from the New York Times spent several hours after the show interviewing Larson for an article about La Boheme’s 100th anniversary, which happened to coincide with RENT. This would be his only interview.
Tragically, Larson passed away at 12:30AM on January 25, 1996, the day of the first preview of RENT. He died of an aortic aneurysm, which has an 80 to 90% recovery rate if treated in time. The producers and cast decided that instead of going forward with the preview, the cast would sit and sing the score to Larson’s family and friends in the audience. The songs weighed heavy on the actors, as if Larson had written his own eulogy. But by “La Vie Boheme,” the actors realized they needed to celebrate and move, so they stood and danced on the table and celebrated Larson’s life.
The unexpected timing of Larson’s death was highly publicized and gave new significance to the play’s message of “No Day But Today.” After a glowing review in The New York Times, tickets sold out for the month the next day. The show was extended by a month, and it once again sold out within a week.
On February 23, 1996, the producers announced that it would move to Broadway. The producers chose the rundown Nederlander Theatre because of its location south of 42nd Street and because they were able to renovate it to their liking. The building was painted green, and the carpets were redone in leopard print to resemble a Village night club. In the middle of a Broadway preparation rehearsal on April 9th, it was announced that Jonathan Larson had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Before the opening performance of RENT on Broadway on April 29, 1996, Anthony Rapp took center stage and said, “We dedicate this and every performance to the memory of Jonathan Larson.”
Acclaim and Audience Response
The 1996 production of RENT won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book and Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who played Angel. Tickets were sold out months in advance, but the producers wanted RENT tickets to remain affordable, so the first two rows of seats set aside and sold for $20 each before each show. Demand for these tickets skyrocketed and RENT developed a huge following. Audiences would line up outside the theatre, on weekends for more than 24 hours, in hopes of getting these tickets.
In November 1996, a national tour opened in Boston. In 1997, the Larson family established the Larson Performing Arts Foundation to benefit theatre artists. A 2005 film based on the musical starred most of the original principal cast. The original Broadway production ran for 5,123 performances, closing on September 7, 2008. An Off-Broadway production, with new staging by the original director and producers, opened at New World Stages on August 11, 2011.
La Bohème
Jonathan Larson and Billy Aronson’s goal for RENT was to write a modern version of Puccini’s opera La Bohème. The 1896 opera was based on Henri Murger’s Scenes de la Vie de Bohème, a collection of stories published in 1851. The opera focuses on Bohemians in Paris on Christmas Eve, 1830, and has many parallels to Larson’s RENT. Puccini’s Mimi is a seamstress dying of consumption who falls in love with neighbor Rodolfo, a poet. Rodolfo’s other roommates include Marcello, a painter, Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician. They become Larson’s Mark, Collins, and Angel. Other characters include Benoit, the landlord, Musetta, a singer, and Alcindoro, a state councilor: Larson’s Benny, Maureen, and Joanne. Other similarities include Collins’ stolen coat, Angel’s request to kill Evita the akita (in Puccini’s, a parrot) and the use of “Musetta’s Waltz” as a recurring theme in Roger’s music. In Larson’s rock-opera, the time and place are changed to the new center of the Bohemian movement: New York City’s Greenwich Village, and the disease changed to the modern-day plague: AIDS.
AIDS
On June 1, 1981, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published a report stating that five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles had contracted Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare lung infection. This incident was the first reporting of what would come to be known as the AIDS epidemic. Reports continued, many with men dying of other rare diseases, but all traced back to a decreased immune system. By the end of the year, there had been 270 reports of immune deficiency in gay men. Of those reported, 121 had died.
The term AIDS was first used on September 24, 1982, and stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is the last stage of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
In June 1983, Denver organization People Living with AIDS (PLWAs) issued a statement expressing disgust with the term “AIDS victims,” and requested the more dignified term “people with AIDS.” On August 14th 1983, Jeff Hagedorn premiered a thirty-minute monologue entitled One, depicting a gay man with AIDS. The play raised funds and AIDS awareness and is considered by some the first “AIDS play,” a movement later continued by RENT.
As the 80’s marched on, AIDS Action was formed to advocate for people and communities affected by the epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control Infection and Prevention recognized that AIDS could also be contracted by needle-sharing, and blood banks started testing blood donations. 1950’s heartthrob Rock Hudson died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1985, giving a face to the epidemic and changing the media’s entire dialogue about AIDS.
Finally in 1987, after more than 24,000 people had died of the disease, President Ronald Regan spoke publically about AIDS for the first time and the AIDS awareness movement gained national momentum. Larry Kramer, playwright of The Normal Heart, created AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in New York and the FDA approved the use of the antiretroviral drug AZT to fight the infection. The U.S. Surgeon General coordinated the first HIV/AIDS education plan, sending 107 million pamphlets to reach all American households. In 1988, December 1st was declared World AIDS Day.
In 1989, the year Jonathan Larson began writing RENT, the number of reported cases in the United States reached 100,000. In 1990, the CDC implemented a new “client-centered” approach, focusing on the patients rather than the disease. In 1991, Visual AIDS Artists Caucus launches the red ribbon campaign, which became the international symbol of AIDS awareness.
In 2000, President Clinton announced the Millennium Vaccine initiative as an incentive to get scientists to create a cure. He also declared AIDS a threat to national security, and started a program to assist developing countries in HIV research and treatments.
Today, more than 1.5 million people in North America, and more than 33.3 million in the world are living with HIV and AIDS. The world is more aware than ever about AIDS, and it is no longer the death sentence it once was. Under President Obama, the travel and immigration ban on HIV-infected individuals was lifted January 4, 2010, allowing the International Conference on AIDS to be once again held in the United States in 2012. Discrimination is much less prominent today, and AIDS awareness is taught in schools, making the topic of AIDS a conversation willing to be had.
References:
Aids.Gov. United States Government, n.d. Web. 22 Jul 2011. <http://aids.gov/>.
Haun, Harry. “RENT, Reinvented.” Playbill 14 Jul 2011: n. pag. Web. 22 Jul 2011.
Larson, Jonathan, Evelyn McDonnell, Kathy Silberger, Larry Fink, Stewart Ferebee, and Kate Giel. RENT. New York: Rob Weisbach Books, 1997. Print.
Larson, Jonathan. RENT: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical. 1st ed. Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2008. vii-xiii. Print.
No Day But Today: The Story of RENT. Sony: 2006, Film.
Puccini, Giacomo. “La Boheme.” Opera Classic Library. Ed.. Burton D. Fisher. Coral Gables: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2001. Print.
Rapp, Anthony. Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical RENT. 1st ed. New York City, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Print.
“’RENT’ Takes Final Bow On Broadway.” NPR News. National Public Radio: 07 Sep 2008. Radio. 22 Jul 2011. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94369846>.
Roman, David. Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS. 1st ed. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. Print.
Notes on the production compiled by Kelley Holley.