The musical was Rent and he is celebrating his silver anniversary this year with an online gala and much gratitude from generations of fans.
Jonathan Larson’s story of liberal artists and street people in the grim drug and AIDS-ridden East Village of New York in the early 1990s, was inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme” and found a ready-made audience among young people.
“It gives people hope who feel ‘I am different’ and ‘I do not fit.’ It says’ It does not matter ‘,’ says James Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop, which grew ‘Rent’. It says, “You can go out and create your own community.” ‘
New York Theater Workshop celebrates ‘Rent’ on March 2 with a gala that will be available until March 6. Original cast members are accompanied 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 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Score and Book and a Pulitzer Prize. It lasted 12 years on Broadway and featured more than 5,000 appearances, launching the careers of Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Anthony Rapp.
There was a 2005 film screening, several tours, a Broadway revival, international productions, a Hollywood Bowl concert and a live performance on Fox in 2019, all fueled by songs such as’ Take Me or Leave Me ‘,’ Out Tonight ‘and the crowd-pleasing “Seasons of Love.”
There has since been reference to ‘Rent’ in everything from ‘The Big Bang Theory’ to ‘The Simpsons’ to ‘I Am Legend’. In the movie ‘Team America: World Police’, puppets play a show called ‘Lease’.
Larson never saw his triumph: he died at the age of 35 of an aortic aneurysm after the final dress rehearsal in January 1996.
The 15 original actors stay in touch and share a text thread. “We really got into a relationship right away and had trust with each other, especially after the tragedy,” Heredia said. “There is nothing that binds people more than tragedy.”
The musical had an unpretentious start. The New York Theater Workshop just moved into the East Village in the summer of 1992 and is busy with construction. Larson rides past on his bike and pokes his head in.
“He was curious because he wrote this musical for the East Village and was looking for a home for it in the East Village,” Nicola said.
A few days later, Larson released a screenplay and a cassette tape on which he sang all the songs. The timing was perfect. “We were looking for something to do to our environment in a literal sense and to walk this musical,” Nicola said.
It was quickly clear that Larson was imbued with classical music, pop and everything in between, which Pascal calls an ‘incredibly unique, eclectic influence soup’. Larson’s musical came at the top of the company’s list.
“People can write music. People can write words. Not so many people can write words and music together, ”says Nicola. “And then even less can understand that words and music are placed in a dramatic context.”
The show attracts Rubin-Vega, who is usually not interested in musical theater. “It spoke to me,” she recalls. “I knew these people. These are the kind of people I used to hang out with. It was, she adds, a musical she wanted to see for herself.
She will earn a Tony nomination for her Mimi, an HIV-positive heroin addict and stripper. She remembers watching and watching audiences sing along – a few weeks before an album was available. They were repeat customers.
“It was a supernova,” she said.
Just being in “Rent” was life-changing for Heredia, a then-24-year-old who never thought he would be in a musical, much less the leap to Broadway.
“I never saw my face in the faces of people who were on Broadway,” says Heredia, who played the doomed drag queen Angel.
It was Heredia, a self-described hyperactive club kid, who one day jumped on a table during a training break – to the surprise of director Michael Greif. The step was placed in the show.
‘The trick of the whole number was not to jump on the table. That was the start of the table, ”says Heredia laughing. “My back and my knees are paying for it now.”
Heredia won a Tony for his work, but he says he cherishes the dozens of people who approached him to say Angel helped them reach out to their parents, accept their son or just inspire them.
“The impact it has had on my generations has affected me even more than the Tony,” he says. “It’s 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 nurture performances such as ‘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,'” Nicola said. “It’s so important. It transformed the organization. ”
One of “Rent” fans is Miranda, the visionary behind “Hamilton,” Rubin-Vega remarked. “He is a legacy of Jonathan, just as Jonathan was a legacy of Sondheim,” she said.
Pascal adds, “It’s a gift that keeps on giving.”