I was 23 years old in 1996 when “RENT” debuted on Broadway, around the same age as many of the characters in the show. I was working on a theater internship in London when it hit and the original Broadway cast recording was released. It’s tentacles rapidly crossed the Atlantic and into the rehearsal spaces and greenrooms I was in and out of all spring and summer. By the time I got back stateside, it was everywhere.
Life Support Group Chat
The show’s composer, Jonathan Larson, stated that he wanted to make a rock musical “for the MTV generation.” Drugs, AIDS, poverty, squalor, life on the razor’s edge of survival. Sounds like a fun night at the theater. But three decades later the musical has become an icon of the 1990s zeitgeist, blending the inspiration and cynicism of Generation X as it moved through that liminal space between the 80s and the new millennium. “RENT’s” ubiquitousness at all levels of theater can be a head-scratcher for those of us who have watched it from the beginning. With every new production, we tend to ask a lot of questions, like: “Rent? Again?” “It’s kind of dated, right?” “Did we really need a teen version of that?” “Is the rock musical still a thing? Is rock music still a thing?” “Do artists still squat in the East Village?” “Are artists still artists? Or are they all influencers now?”…