From the Director: Chip Miller
Photo by Kate Szrom
FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND
SIX HUNDRED MINUTES
HOW DO YOU MEASURE — MEASURE A YEAR?
The second act of Jonathan Larson’s masterpiece Rent begins with this profound question: How do you measure a year?
For myself, measurements of time have become fairly surreal since the forced shutdown in March of 2020. Days often feel like weeks and months fly by like hours.
When we began discussing the possibility of a musical ending our 2021-2022 season, my first thought was, “We have to do Rent!” This was sometime in the early winter of 2020 and it felt so important to tell a story of love and community in a time of illness and precarity. As I spent time alone in my studio apartment, I craved the catharsis of being in a room with hundreds of others listening to live music — knowing that sharing that space with others could and would be healing.
As I write this note from the rehearsal hall 17 months later, I am overjoyed by this story and the ability of these songs to create the space for that catharsis. I knew that Rent could create that space because it has done so for me many times in my life. This story and these songs showed a little kid from Missouri that a whole world of possibility existed — queer love stories, artists as anarchists, chosen family. That it was also the beginning of my understanding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic seems a fitting lesson — all of those magical possibilities live in the specter of death, disease, and a system not made to support those in need.
To return to the question at the beginning of Act Two: How do you measure a year? Jonathan answered it beautifully and clearly — you measure in love. That timeless message is one that continues to inspire me as I listen to our incredible cast sing this song.
MEASURE IN LOVE
MEASURE, MEASURE YOUR LIFE IN LOVE
SEASONS OF LOVE
More about Rent:
Alphabet City
Alphabet City is a neighborhood in the East Village of Manhattan. Learn more about the history of this area and the many arts and activist movements that took place there.
AIDS, Arts, & Activism
Learn about the history of the AIDS epidemic, including the cultural responses that exist to this day.
La Bohéme to Rent: Legacies
Rent is loosely based on the opera La Bohème, composed by Giacomo Puccini. Learn more about the story of La Bohéme and its connection to Rent.
Thank You, Jonathan Larson: 25 Years of Rent
More than 25 years after Jonathan Larson's death and the original cast's first preview performance of Rent, both of which occurred on January 25, 1996, the world still has Jonathan to thank for his contributions to the living canon of musical theater.
Reviews of Rent
"With a story based on Puccini's 19th-century opera La Bohème, Rent tells the story of angsty young adults struggling to pay their rent and worrying about a cyber arts studio coming to their impoverished neighborhood." -Deseret News
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