by Pam Kragen
North County Times
March 10, 2000

When Escondido resident Courtney Corey takes the stage Tuesday in San Diego for the return engagement of the rock opera "Rent," she'll have a very special fan in the audience -- her husband of just two months, Poway High School music teacher Matthew Armstrong.

Corey, 25, took a break from the national touring production of "Rent" just long enough to get married to Armstrong in January.  Except for a short break last fall, Corey has been touring with the show for nearly a year and a half.  Although separation from her new spouse is hard, Corey said that if she must be on the raod, "Rent" is the show to be in.

"The cast and I all agree that 'Rent' has spoiled us for anything else," Corey said in a phone interview from the road.  "It's one of those shows that's really refreshing and different.  With most shows, you could get bored playing the same thing every night, but 'Rent' is really unusual.  It broke the mold for musical theater." Gritty and urban, "Rent" is certainly no "Oklahoma." 

Set in New York's AIDS and drug-riddled East Village in the mid-1990s, its Generation X bohemian characters include a heroin addict/exotic dancer, a lesbian performance artist and an HIV-positive drag queen. 

"Rent" won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for drama, four Tony Awards (including best musical, score, and book) and more than a dozen other top honors, but what it's perhaps best known for is its sad birthing.

Jonathan Larson, who spent seven years writing the book, score, and lyrics for "Rent," dropped dead from a brain aneurysm just one day before the musical was to have its first performance before a live audience in March 1996.

His sudden death, at just 35, ironically underscored the musical's underlying message: to live for the moment -- for it may be your last. 

Corey, a "swing" who understudies the part of Maureen (the aforementioned lesbian performance artist) and performs in the show's ensemble, said "Rent" has taught her the same message.

"It creeps into your personal life," said Corey, 25.  "You can plan all you want, but you have to live in the present.  Young people today get so wrapped up in their futures, we don't take advantage of what's here and now."

"Rent" is loosely based upon Giacomo Puccini's 1896 opera "La Boheme," about a group of starving artists in early 19th-century Paris.  Larson borrowed many of the characters and key scenes from "La Boheme" but changed them radically.

The poet Rodolfo becomes Roger, an HIV-positive rock musician whose girlfriend has committed suicide.   The shy, tubercular seamstress Mimi becomes an HIV-positive junkie who dances at a strip club to support her heroin habit.  They fall in love not when Mimi drops a key in Rodolfo's apartment, but when the new Mimi drops a bag of heroin. Rodolfo's painter friend Marcello becomes Mark, a documentary filmmaker whose girlfriend Maureen (Musetta in the original "La Boheme"), has dumped him for a lesbian lover, Joanne.

And the men's platonic roommates in "La Boheme," Colline and Shaunard, become gay lovers Tom Collins, an HIV-positive philosophy teacher, and Angel Shunard, an HIV-positive drag queen/street drummer.

In "Rent," these "artists" are struggling to pay their rent are facing homelessness when their yuppie landlord decides to turn the apartment building into a cyber-arts complex.

"Rent" was originally directed both in it debut theater, the New York Theater Workshop, and later on Broadway, by Michael Grief, who just finished up a four-year stint here as artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse.

When "Rent" was getting ready to hit the road in 1997, Greif launched the tour from La Jolla, where it became the biggest-grossing show in Playhouse history.

Today, "Rent" is still running on Broadway, touring the United States and playing in South America and Italy.  New tours are scheduled to launch later this year in Asia and eastern Europe.  A critical and commercial juggernaut, "Rent" shows no signs of slowing down.

Corey said she is booked with "Rent" through the summer and after that, she said, she'd like to take some time off from touring to return home to her new husband.

Corey graduated from the San Diego School of Creative Arts in 1992 and began attending San Diego State University but a performing opportunity came up that she couldn't turn down.  She was offered a job as the lead singer in a Dixieland jazz band at Tokyo Disneyland.  So, at 21, she moved to Tokyo, where she performed daily with an all-Japanese band and learned to speak the language.  Her love for Japanese culture led her to choose the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park as the site for her wedding.

After she came home from Japan, she performed in various theaters around San Diego County, including The Theater in Old Town, Starlight Musical Theatre and the Welk Resort Theatre.  It was while she was performing at the Welk theater in late 1997 that she and a group of fellow cast members drove up to L.A. to audition for "Rent" and eventually got the part.

Other "Rent" tour members who hail from San Diego include Racquel Roberts, an understudy who graduated from UC San Diego; San Diego State grad Roeya Banauzizi, the touring company's manager; San Diego resident Coy Lopez, who serves as the company's sound engineer; and Beth Robertson, a former UCSD student who is company stage manager.