playbill vip

A Note from the Director:

“Rent doesn't speak for a generation, it speaks to a generation.”- Adam Pascal, who played Roger in the original cast in 1996.

         In Rent, Jonathan Larson has created a piece of art that has almost alchemically combined the sounds of the classic rock legends he grew up adoring with the stylings of musical theatre greats like Stephen Sondheim. Rent has an almost rock-concert feel at times, while still using the music as a vehicle for telling the story.

         Rent came into my life when I was 15. I was fascinated. I began what became a journey through many years of research into the story of Rent.  Nowhere else in Broadway's repertoire is there a story told quite as bluntly about what it is like to live as an artist. Rent deals with issues like homosexuality, the AIDS epidemic, and homelessness, all of which are still topics of discussion in contemporary America.

         Rent is important because it boldly displays reality as it actually exists, and not as we would like to believe it does. The reality of living as songwriter or a filmmaker in New York is that you are going to be so poor your apartment doesn't have heat, and that you won't always know where your next meal will come from. We, as artists, tend to have an idealized vision of what our futures will look like. Rent strips that away, while somehow not removing the hope. The characters are “hungry and frozen,” but they acknowledge that this is a life that they have chosen for themselves, and that they are still passionate about the acts of creation in which they engage.

         Rent is not a piece that allows the audience to listen passively. Jonathan Larson created a script that demands answers to unanswerable questions, and the audience is forced to engage.

         My hope for you, as the audience, is that you think about the questions that we ask. I hope you remember things that made you uncomfortable, and I hope that you examine why that might be. Finally, I hope that you let Rent speak to you the way it has spoken to me, and an entire generation of theatre-goers.

                                                          -Hillary Crum, Director