RENT gets me every time, even the 16th time. I first fell under the spell of Jonathan Larson's singular creation of hope, love, and community while watching the
1996 Tony Awards, which, five years before my first trip to NYC and in the very early days of the internet, was how a Midwestern girl like me learned about Broadway musicals. For those of you too young to remember 1996,
RENT exploded on the pop culture landscape similar to how
Hamilton did a few years ago. Not only did it win four Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Jonathan Larson, the original cast of unknowns (most of whom are still working today on Broadway and in TV and films) made the rounds of all of the TV talk shows. At the time I had just graduated from college and was living on my own for the first time, existing on a grad student budget without a car (literally riding my bike midday past the three-piece suits). I was the same age and in the same situation as the
RENT characters (well, sort of, if getting a masters in statistics in St. Paul is like being an artist in the East Village). Perhaps this is why I fell so hard for
RENT, in a way I haven't for any musical before or since. In short,
RENT was my first musical love, and you never forget your first love, even if people tell you it's dated. Sure, maybe it's a period piece now with its quaint answering machine references. But here's where I remind you that
there are currently over a million Americans living with living with living with HIV, with nearly 40,000 new cases every year. So until AIDS becomes the polio of the late 20th/early 21st Century, a disease of the past completely eradicated,
RENT will never be dated. And even on that happy day, this story of young people struggling with disease, poverty, drug addiction, and loss, yet persevering through it and celebrating life and each other, will always be relatable. No day but today!
