by Wayne Harada
Honolulu Advertiser
June 1, 2000

Kevin McCollum, the Honolulu-born producer of the hit musical "Rent," says his personal and professional life converged when he decided to take on the show.

Now he’s bringing it all back home - since "Rent" opens a two-week run Aug. 2 at the Blaisdell Concert Hall.

"I lived in Honolulu till I was 14 and always loved theater because of my mother," said McCollum, 38. His mom was the late Sue McCollum Gereben, who worked at KGMB Radio and was an active Press Club and community theater actress, who died of cancer while vacationing in Paris in 1976, when he was 14.

"I learned a lot about adults through my mom," he said. "Here was a woman tied to my belief in ‘Rent’ - that is, the urgency of how you live a life. My mom was someone desperately eager to be an actress, but she took risks. In taking on ‘Rent,’ it was a risk for me, too - one that paid off."

She instilled in McCollum the value of family, of community, of dedication to doing what you believe.

"She told me, years before she died, that she would not be around for long," said McCollum, who still feels a kinship with his mother, whom many here remember as the "voice of Liberty House."

Together, they discovered the bountiful joys of acting - in separate shows - at the then-Honolulu Community Theatre, which since has been renamed Diamond Head Theatre. "My Hawaiian upbringing, the multicultural experiences of humans while growing up in the Islands really rubbed off on me. Theater was part of her family; it was my community."

He remembers doing quite a bit of theater locally and continued doing so in Chicago, where he attended high school, while living with an aunt and uncle.

And going to New York, at 18, "with lots of time and no money, he quenched his thirst for theater. "I would wait outside the theater, hoping someone would offer a ticket, which I’d pay for, or got free, because they knew I was a student," he said.

Struggling artists

That memory stuck, and when he mounted "Rent," the legendary Jonathan Larson musical play inspired by Puccini’s "La Boheme," about a family of bohemians struggling for a voice in the world, he acted on it.

He earmarked the first two rows of every production of every "Rent" show for students willing to line up for $20 tickets (compared to the New York high of $80) a couple of hours before curtain. The presence of eager voices up front permeates the rest of the audience, he said, and that mini-community would become part of the greater theatrical community. (Yes, the offer will be repeated here.)

And, he said, "Rent" - which won the 1996 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize - sort of reinvented Broadway, catering to the 13- to 30-year-olds, "creating a new dynamics for the theater.

" Rent’ has instilled the power of storytelling in a contemporary setting, and it is everything you want it to be: an opera, because it is based on ‘La Boheme,’ a love story, and musical theater in that it has classical Rodgers and Hammerstein duets, quartets and quintets.

"It has been compared to ‘Hair,’ which I disagree with, because that was more about dissent and the Vietnam war. It is more like ‘A Chorus Line,’ in that it focuses on a community on the fringes, on people who pull together, in a time and nation where real estate is important and artists are kicked out of their homes. Like ‘Chorus Line,’ where you can’t be in the chorus if you’re too good, ‘Rent’ is all about survival and bonding as a family."

Many ‘families’

McCollum recalled fondly the various "families" from his past - the crew of actors, his mother’s Press Club friends, his Punahou days of May Day pageants, and his closeness to his mom (a single parent; she was twice married and divorced).

"Of course, her illness and divorces were painful. Through it all, my mom was good with people, and that’s why I believe and strive to be the same. You are defined by who you touch and how you touch them."

He has assimilated his mother’s lessons into his career. "I’m a producer, remember, so I listen and observe a lot. I learned quickly that life is a gift. I wanted my mom to live, but her death taught me how precious and fragile life is. Same with Jonathan, who dreamed of being interviewed by the New York Times. The night after he did an interview, he died of an aneurysm. It was unfair, yes; but she and he are part of my life every day now. I wish more young people will have a relationship with their parents."

Larson died just after the first preview of "Rent" in 1996 and his death, like McCollum’s mom’s, inspired McCollum to continue pursuing his passion - theater.

McCollum was an actor till he was 27 and co-founded The Booking Office, a New York theatrical booking and producing agency, later called The Booking Group. That connection led him to Larson and "Rent."

McCollum also formed the Ordway Music Theatre, based in St. Paul, Minn., and since has produced "De La Guardia," an off-Broadway hit running in New York and London.

When he sat in on an early run-through of "Rent," he was told that it would be something very special - or junk.

Special songs

As he heard specific songs - "Season of Love," "Light My Candle" - McCollum realized he was discovering something special.

He said he values three things in a musical: "It must have a love story, it has to start on Earth and end up in heaven, and it must be about a community."

"The issue for me is community, all the time," said McCollum. "That’s why I haven’t been back home for years. I came back once, in 1978, and it wasn’t the Hawai‘i I remembered, partly because I knew I couldn’t remain there."

In a mid-week cocktail party, he met many people he grew up with, acted with, or befriended through his mom. Finally, he felt fulfilled - "with a sense of family all over again."

"Rent," the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical, opens a two-week run Aug. 2 at Blaisdell Concert Hall.

Still running on the Great White Way and touring internationally, "Rent" has been hailed as one of the most exuberant and original American musicals to come along in the past decade.

It has single-handedly reinvigorated Broadway, attracting traditional crowds, yet luring a younger generation of theatergoers, particularly teens and twenty- to thirtysomethings.

Inspired by Puccini’s "La Boheme," "Rent" is structurally a rock opera, written by the late Jonathan Larson and directed by Michael Greif, and is a bittersweet tale that celebrates a community of arts and artisans struggling with soaring hopes amid the tough realities of today’s world.

The show is co-produced by Kevin McCollum and is being presented in its Island debut by SFX Theatricals, which staged such Broadway blockbusters as "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Miss Saigon" and "Stomp" in their premieres here in the past. SFX’s most recent import was the musical "Fame."