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fandomhigh_ooc2006-12-31 10:44 am
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Spotlight on Fandom: RENT
Spotlight on Fandoms: RENT
RENT is a Broadway musical (that was turned into a movie in 2005) written by Jonathan Larson and first performed in New York, off-Broadway on January 25, 1996. It moved to Broadway three months after the opening and is still playing there. It has toured the world, won numerous awards and has touched the lives of millions.
The creation of RENT was a seven year labor of love that Jonathan Larson never got to see to fruition. The night of the final dress rehearsal, he went home and was making a cup of tea before bed when he suffered an aortic aneurysm and died within moments. He won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
(warning: there are some minor spoilers throughout the lj-cut sections. I tried to keep things as vague as possible for those of you who don't know the show.)
RENT is an updated version of the opera "La Boheme" by Giacomo Puccini. It relocates the story of Parisian artists to New York City's East Village. In the opera, Mimi suffers from consumption (aka tuberculosis). In RENT, four of the eight main characters are struggling with HIV/AIDS.
The show is told through the eyes of Mark, one of the eight main characters, a filmmaker. It starts on Christmas Eve and introduces us to the impoverished lives the characters lead. Mark and his roommate, Roger, are burning old screenplays and rock posters to stay warm since their heat was shut off by their uncaring landlord.
Through the course of the evening, some old friends show up and some new friends are made. By the end of the first act, the group is celebrating life and having a good time. (Yes, the entirety of the first act in the stage show takes place in one night and doesn't start until 9pm. Apparently RENT time is a little like Fandom time.)
The second act opens on New Years Eve and, after celebrating, the friends return home to discover their building has been padlocked. They break in and claim squatting rights, but there ends up being fights and breakups among a few of the couples. The rest of the act follows our main characters through the ups and downs of the rest of the year (and I don't want to drop any heavy spoilers), culminating on the following Christmas Eve when people are reunited and there is a relatively happy ending.
There are eight primary characters in RENT and they have very convoluted relationships. I'll do my best to explain them without too many spoilers.
Mark: An aspiring filmmaker. He is Roger's roommate and Maureen's ex-boyfriend. He is the narrator of the show.
Roger: An aspiring songwriter. He is Mark's roommate and develops a love relationship with Mimi. He is HIV positive, a former drug user and got the disease from his ex-girlfriend, April, who committed suicide.
Mimi: An exotic dancer and drug addict who is HIV positive. She develops a love relationship with Roger and formerly had a relationship with Benny.
Collins: A philosophy teacher/computer whiz who is also an anarchist. He has AIDS and used to live with Roger, Mark, Benny and Maureen. He develops a love relationship with Angel.
Angel: A drag queen street musician with AIDS who helps Collins after he's been mugged at the very beginning of the show. They develop a love relationship.
Maureen: A performance artist who used to date Mark but dumped him for Joanne. She used to live in the loft with Mark, Roger, Benny and Collins.
Joanne: A lawyer who is dating Maureen and serving as her stage manager.
Benny: The former roommate of Mark, Roger, Collins and Maureen who 'married up' and is now their landlord. His former friends consider him a sellout. He also had a relationship with Mimi at some point in the past.
So to sum it up? Mark, Roger, Collins, Maureen and Benny were all roommates. Joanne is Maureen's lover. Mimi and Angel meet the gang on that fateful Christmas Eve.
Jonathan Larson's vision was to change contemporary theater and make it fun for young audiences. He wanted to celebrate art and those who create it. In his mind, RENT was a "generational anthem".
Yes, it deals with gritty topics like AIDS, drug use, suicide and homosexuality. But it deals with those things through song. In fact, the majority of the show is sung, there is very little spoken dialogue.
Because one of Larson's goals was to make young people excited about theater and to make it accessible to them, the Nederlander Theatre has a lottery for the first two rows of seats for each performance. Those tickets are sold for $20 each.
Many fans have seen the show dozens of times. Die hard fans are called "Rent Heads" - some of them even dress up as their favorite characters for the show.
As I said earlier, in 2005, a movie was released in theaters. As always, when you're transferring something between mediums, there were a few differences. There are some definite spoilers in this section.
One of the nicest things about the movie is that six of the eight original Broadway cast members were able to play their original roles. Adam Pascal as Roger, Anthony Rapp as Mark, Idina Menzel as Maureen, Jesse L. Martin as Collins, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Angel and Taye Diggs as Benny. The original Mimi (Daphne Ruben-Vega) was pregnant and replaced with Rosario Dawson and the original Joanne (Fredi Walker) stated she was too old to play the part.
One of the most obvious differences is that the show is never set in a specific year, but the movie starts on Christmas Eve 1989 and ends on Christmas Eve 1990. Another huge difference is that the action of the first act in the movie takes place over both a few days and not just on Christmas Eve. The last big difference is that they changed some of the sung lines to dialogue in the movie (which makes sense for the medium).
The difference that bothers me the most is that, in the show, April (Roger's girlfriend who is never seen, only mentioned) kills her self when she finds out she has AIDS by "slitting her wrists in the bathroom". In the movie, we see April in flashbacks and she dies from AIDS, not suicide. The thing that bugs me is that April's suicide is hinted at being the catalyst for Roger to go into rehab for his drug use and her dying from AIDS isn't as dramatic in that regard.
Another big difference is that, in the movie, Joanne and Maureen become engaged and Joanne's parents throw them an engagement party. It's at this party in the movie where the song "Take Me or Leave Me" occurs. I personally like this change a lot from the stage show.
Now the fun stuff!
Uploads
Original Broadway Cast recording - Act 1 and Act 2
Bootleg of Anthony Rapp's last performance as Mark with Norbert Leo Butz playing Roger (he won the Tony in 2005 for his performance in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, he was also Fiyero in the Original Broadway Cast of Wicked).
YouTube Video Clips
One Song Glory
Out Tonight and Another Day
Take Me Or Leave Me
Without You
What You Own
Any questions, comments, random song quotes are welcome! Also let me know if any links or uploads don't work.
RENT is a Broadway musical (that was turned into a movie in 2005) written by Jonathan Larson and first performed in New York, off-Broadway on January 25, 1996. It moved to Broadway three months after the opening and is still playing there. It has toured the world, won numerous awards and has touched the lives of millions.
The creation of RENT was a seven year labor of love that Jonathan Larson never got to see to fruition. The night of the final dress rehearsal, he went home and was making a cup of tea before bed when he suffered an aortic aneurysm and died within moments. He won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
(warning: there are some minor spoilers throughout the lj-cut sections. I tried to keep things as vague as possible for those of you who don't know the show.)
RENT is an updated version of the opera "La Boheme" by Giacomo Puccini. It relocates the story of Parisian artists to New York City's East Village. In the opera, Mimi suffers from consumption (aka tuberculosis). In RENT, four of the eight main characters are struggling with HIV/AIDS.
The show is told through the eyes of Mark, one of the eight main characters, a filmmaker. It starts on Christmas Eve and introduces us to the impoverished lives the characters lead. Mark and his roommate, Roger, are burning old screenplays and rock posters to stay warm since their heat was shut off by their uncaring landlord.
Through the course of the evening, some old friends show up and some new friends are made. By the end of the first act, the group is celebrating life and having a good time. (Yes, the entirety of the first act in the stage show takes place in one night and doesn't start until 9pm. Apparently RENT time is a little like Fandom time.)
The second act opens on New Years Eve and, after celebrating, the friends return home to discover their building has been padlocked. They break in and claim squatting rights, but there ends up being fights and breakups among a few of the couples. The rest of the act follows our main characters through the ups and downs of the rest of the year (and I don't want to drop any heavy spoilers), culminating on the following Christmas Eve when people are reunited and there is a relatively happy ending.
There are eight primary characters in RENT and they have very convoluted relationships. I'll do my best to explain them without too many spoilers.
Mark: An aspiring filmmaker. He is Roger's roommate and Maureen's ex-boyfriend. He is the narrator of the show.
Roger: An aspiring songwriter. He is Mark's roommate and develops a love relationship with Mimi. He is HIV positive, a former drug user and got the disease from his ex-girlfriend, April, who committed suicide.
Mimi: An exotic dancer and drug addict who is HIV positive. She develops a love relationship with Roger and formerly had a relationship with Benny.
Collins: A philosophy teacher/computer whiz who is also an anarchist. He has AIDS and used to live with Roger, Mark, Benny and Maureen. He develops a love relationship with Angel.
Angel: A drag queen street musician with AIDS who helps Collins after he's been mugged at the very beginning of the show. They develop a love relationship.
Maureen: A performance artist who used to date Mark but dumped him for Joanne. She used to live in the loft with Mark, Roger, Benny and Collins.
Joanne: A lawyer who is dating Maureen and serving as her stage manager.
Benny: The former roommate of Mark, Roger, Collins and Maureen who 'married up' and is now their landlord. His former friends consider him a sellout. He also had a relationship with Mimi at some point in the past.
So to sum it up? Mark, Roger, Collins, Maureen and Benny were all roommates. Joanne is Maureen's lover. Mimi and Angel meet the gang on that fateful Christmas Eve.
Jonathan Larson's vision was to change contemporary theater and make it fun for young audiences. He wanted to celebrate art and those who create it. In his mind, RENT was a "generational anthem".
Yes, it deals with gritty topics like AIDS, drug use, suicide and homosexuality. But it deals with those things through song. In fact, the majority of the show is sung, there is very little spoken dialogue.
Because one of Larson's goals was to make young people excited about theater and to make it accessible to them, the Nederlander Theatre has a lottery for the first two rows of seats for each performance. Those tickets are sold for $20 each.
Many fans have seen the show dozens of times. Die hard fans are called "Rent Heads" - some of them even dress up as their favorite characters for the show.
As I said earlier, in 2005, a movie was released in theaters. As always, when you're transferring something between mediums, there were a few differences. There are some definite spoilers in this section.
One of the nicest things about the movie is that six of the eight original Broadway cast members were able to play their original roles. Adam Pascal as Roger, Anthony Rapp as Mark, Idina Menzel as Maureen, Jesse L. Martin as Collins, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Angel and Taye Diggs as Benny. The original Mimi (Daphne Ruben-Vega) was pregnant and replaced with Rosario Dawson and the original Joanne (Fredi Walker) stated she was too old to play the part.
One of the most obvious differences is that the show is never set in a specific year, but the movie starts on Christmas Eve 1989 and ends on Christmas Eve 1990. Another huge difference is that the action of the first act in the movie takes place over both a few days and not just on Christmas Eve. The last big difference is that they changed some of the sung lines to dialogue in the movie (which makes sense for the medium).
The difference that bothers me the most is that, in the show, April (Roger's girlfriend who is never seen, only mentioned) kills her self when she finds out she has AIDS by "slitting her wrists in the bathroom". In the movie, we see April in flashbacks and she dies from AIDS, not suicide. The thing that bugs me is that April's suicide is hinted at being the catalyst for Roger to go into rehab for his drug use and her dying from AIDS isn't as dramatic in that regard.
Another big difference is that, in the movie, Joanne and Maureen become engaged and Joanne's parents throw them an engagement party. It's at this party in the movie where the song "Take Me or Leave Me" occurs. I personally like this change a lot from the stage show.
Now the fun stuff!
Uploads
Original Broadway Cast recording - Act 1 and Act 2
Bootleg of Anthony Rapp's last performance as Mark with Norbert Leo Butz playing Roger (he won the Tony in 2005 for his performance in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, he was also Fiyero in the Original Broadway Cast of Wicked).
YouTube Video Clips
One Song Glory
Out Tonight and Another Day
Take Me Or Leave Me
Without You
What You Own
Any questions, comments, random song quotes are welcome! Also let me know if any links or uploads don't work.
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