Artist:
Rent
Genre: Broadway
Background:
The Pulitzer Prize winning adaptation of
Puccini's La Boheme set in the grungy corners
of New York City.
Christmas, the Lower East Side. A filmmaker
tries to get over the ex-girlfriend who
left him for another woman. His roommate's
girlfriend has committed suicide after learning
she has AIDS. Outside, a transsexual named
Angel rescues a fellow named Tom Collins
after a mugging, and upstairs, Mimi, an
S&M dancer, is shivering in the cold.
Call it Puccini meets Manhattan. Capturing
both the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical
and that year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama,
Jonathan Larson's ground-breaking rock musical
is the story of a group of friends attempting
to protect a squatters camp and maintain
residency in an East Village building. With
powerful performances and a score blending
rock, ballads, R&B, and salsa, Rent
has reinvented musical theater.
The show opened at the New York Theater
Workshop in the East Village in 1996, and
created an immediate sensation - the combination
of the quality of the production and the
untimely and tragic death of its young creator,
Jonathan Larson, created an energy that
launched it into the theatrical stratosphere.
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