The musical was Rent and is celebrating its silver anniversary this year with an online gala and a lot of gratitude from generations of fans.
Jonathan Larson’s tale of free-spirited artists and homeless people in New York’s East Village, infested with drugs and AIDS, in the early 1990s, was inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme” and found a ready audience among young people.
“It gives hope to people who feel that ‘I’m different’ and ‘I don’t fit’. That says ‘It doesn’t matter’, ”says James Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop, which created“ Rent ”. “It says, ‘You can go out and make your own community.'”
The New York Theater Workshop will celebrate “Rent” with a gala on March 2 that will be available for broadcast until March 6. Members of the original cast will be joined by theater stars such as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Platt, Billy Porter, Ali Stroker, Eva Noblezada and Christopher Jackson. Tickets start at $ 25.
Rent won the Tony Awards for best musical, soundtrack and book and a Pulitzer Prize. It lasted on Broadway for 12 years and more than 5,000 performances, launching the careers of Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Anthony Rapp.
There was a film version of 2005, several tours, an off-Broadway revival, international productions, a show at the Hollywood Bowl and a live performance on Fox in 2019, all powered by songs like “Take Me or Leave Me”, “Out Tonight “and the pleasant“ Seasons of Love ”.
Since then, “Rent” has been referenced in everything from “The Big Bang Theory” to “The Simpsons” and “I Am Legend”. In the film “Team America: World Police”, the puppets represent a show called “Lease”.
Larson never lived to see his triumph: he died at the age of 35 from an aortic aneurysm after his general rehearsal in January 1996.
The original 15 actors keep in touch and share a topic of discussion. “We really kind of immediately established a relationship and trust with each other, especially after the tragedy,” said Heredia. “There is nothing that unites people more than tragedy.”
The musical had an unpretentious start. The New York Theater Workshop had just moved into its East Village space in the summer of 1992 and was under construction. Larson rode a bicycle and stuck his head inside.
“He was curious because he had written a musical for the East Village and was looking for a home for him that would be in the East Village,” said Nicola.
A few days later, Larson left a script and a cassette of him singing all the songs. The timing was perfect. “We were looking for something to do about our neighborhood in the literal sense and on walks in this musical,” said Nicola.
It quickly became clear that Larson was immersed in classical music, pop and everything, what Pascal calls a “soup of eclectic and incredibly unique influence”. Larson’s musical reached the top of the company’s list.
“People can write music. People can write words. Few people can write words and music together ”, says Nicola. “And even less can understand how to put words and music in a dramatic context.”
The show attracted Rubin-Vega, who was generally not interested in musical theater. “That was talking to me,” she recalled. “I knew these people. That’s the kind of person I was hanging out with. ”It was, she adds, a musical that she herself wanted to see.
She would be nominated for Tony by her Mimi, an HIV-positive heroin addict and stripper. She remembers looking outside and seeing the audience singing along – weeks before a cast album is available. They were regular customers.
“It was a supernova,” she said.
Just being on “Rent” was life changing for Heredia, so at the age of 24 she never thought she would be in a musical, let alone one that made the leap to Broadway.
“I never saw my face on the faces of people who were on Broadway,” says Heredia, who played the doomed drag queen Angel.
It was Heredia, a hyperactive boy who called himself a club kid, who one day, during a break in rehearsal, jumped on a table – to the amazement of director Michael Greif. This movement was put on the show.
“The trick to that whole number was not to jump on the table. It was the table jump, ”says Heredia, laughing. “My back and my knees are paying for it now.”
Heredia won a Tony for his work, but he says he appreciates the dozens of people who approached him the most to say that Angel helped them make their parents’ commitment, accept their son or just inspire them.
“The impact this has had on generations for me has affected me even more than Tony,” he says. “It is one of the best things that has ever happened in my life.”
“Rent” also helped put the New York Theater Workshop on the map, where it continued to promote programs like “Hadestown”, “Once” and “Slave Play”.
“You can really look at the history of the New York Theater Workshop neatly divided between before ‘Rent’ and after ‘Rent’,” said Nicola. “It is so significant. It transformed the organization. “
A fan of “Rent” is Miranda, the visionary behind “Hamilton”, noted Rubin-Vega. “In no uncertain terms, he is a legacy from Jonathan, just as Jonathan was a legacy from Sondheim,” she said.
Pascal adds: “It is a gift that continues to give.”