by Kathy Matter
Courier & Journal
March 22, 1999

Many thought RENT, the rock musical about struggling young artists that's generated praise as well as controversy, wouldn't sell in the conservative Heartland. So in 1996, after RENT won four Tony Awards, the general, despairing consensus among Hoosier theater fans was still: "It'll never come here."

Tuesday, RENT not only comes to Indianapolis' Clowes Hall, but arrives with sold-out sign over the box office for all eight performances in the 2,182 seat hall. (Following a tradition that began on Broadway, however, seats in the first two rows of the orchestra section are being held and will go on sale for $20 two hours before show time each day).

So much for that theory about audiences in the Heartland. And the show's pull reaches even deeper. When it opens at Clowes, a 25-year old actor from the so-called Heartland who felt pulled to RENT because it speaks so strongly to his generation - Scott Hunt from Dayton, Ohio - is one of the stars.

He was fresh out of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music whe Newsweek splashed RENT across its cover in May 1996. Reading about actor Anthony Rapp, who originated the role of Mark, "everything he was talking about just made sense to me. It sounded like he was talking to me," recalls Hunt, who now plays Mark. "I just remember calling into the kitchen to my mom, and saying, 'Mom, I'm going to be in this show.'"

Based on Puccini's popular 19th century opera La Boheme, RENT focuses on the counterculture denizens of Alphabet City in New York's East Village. Nobody there has money but everybody has dreams - and some of them need to make their dreams come true fast because they are HIV-positive.

Hand-in-hand with RENT's story is the story of its creator, Jonathan Larson. Like the struggling young artists he wrote about, Larson never gave up his dream of writing a big-time musical that would put the of youth on stage. Just weeks before RENT opened off-Broadway, and immediately turned into a megahit, Larson died alone of an aortic aneurysm in his grungy Greenwich Street apartment. He was 35.

"The obvious message of the show is that there's no day but today," Hunt says, a theme bolstered in real life by the playwright's own death. But, "I think that's misconstrued to mean each day as your last, which seems to promote reckless behavior. I think what he was saying, over and over, is that you have to make active choices in your life," Hunt says. "You can't just sit back and watch it happen to you. If you want to be happy you have to go search for happiness, it doesn't just happen. He was trying to empower a generation of people who felt like they had no power by telling them the power is in you."

Larson made active choices toward his goal of reclaiming Broadway from the stagnation and empty spectacle he saw there. In the tradition of groundbreaking musicals like HAIR in 1967 and A Chorus Line in 1975, he created RENT about young people struggling to fufill their creative dreams.

"When you see a young man like Jonathan Larson who pours his heart and soul into something like this, it gives them (young people) a little faith that maybe somebody out there thinks like I think and maybe, if you try hard enough, you can make a difference," Hunt says.

Rock, music that's expressed the emotions of youth for generations, serves as RENT's language, and Larson pushes it many directions, from emotional ballads ("Seasons of Love") to buoyant songs of life ("La Vie Boheme") to fiery duets ("Take Me or Leave Me"). Having the band on stage charges the atmosphere, and RENT's pace is relentless.

Listening to the CD before attending the show heightens your ability to take it all in. "Jonathan packs a lot of information into a very short amount of space. RENT hits the ground running, and the audience just has to be willing to be a participant and not an observer," Hunt says. "I love that kind of theater. I think theater was meant to engage not pacify."

Larson's characters reflect all the hot issues fo the 1990s, including living with HIV and AIDS. And it's those issues that turn many against RENT without even seeing it. Larson's goal was getting people to look past labels that discriminate.

"It's not 'Oh, that character's gay, and I'm not, so we obviously have nothing in common.' I know a lot of young straight women, especially 14-16, who walk around saying Maureen is a role model. It's not because she's a lesbian but because she's a powerful young woman who speaks her mind," he says. "A lot of adults say, 'What kind of role model is a lesbian?' But honestly the kids don't see it that way, the kids just see her. I wish a lot of the older set could come to the show with as open a mind as the younger set does because they would walk away changed. It's a life-changing show."

As Mark, the 20-something who buries himself in his passion for film so he can forget about the fact he doesn't fit in, Hunt serves as RENT's narrator. Mark's voice in the show is felt by many to be Larson's. As Hunt prepared to assume the role, he not only worked with Rapp, but watched a lot of videos of Larson and talked to many who knew him.

"I realized Anthony wasn't just on the stage playing Mark or playing some character. He was trying to capture the essence of Jonathan Larson. I saw so many mannerisms of Jonathan he had on stage as Mark. They weren't caricatures or impressions, they were real. He really knew him well enough he was able to capture the essence of that person on stage," Hunt says. "Then I really started to think about my responsibility to that show and specifically to that role, and how important Jonathan's voice was in the piece, and that you keep his voice in the piece as much as you can."

A wooden plaque, hand carved by one of Jonathan's relatives, hangs backstage wherever RENT plays. "It says 'Thank you Jonathan Larson' on it. Each and every one of us spends a couple of seconds with it right before we start the show every night just saying thank you for the gift that he gave us and for the opportunity to perform a piece like this," Hunt says.

RENT has been more than a career boost for this 20-something actor, who made his Broadway debut as Marius in the 10th anniversary production of Les Miserables. Its message of empowerment "has made me take action in a lot of places where I'd just let things slide," he says, from relationships to creative endeavors. "I've always wanted to write screenplays. I started to write a little bit before going on the road, but since I've been out here, RENT's just inspired me to finish a lot of things."

"What You Own," RENT's finale and its anthem to the 1990s, gives Hunt and other young adults their mandate. "It says that when you're living in America at the end of the millenium, you're what you own, and it's so true," he says. "We are all we have in this day and age - our ideas, our thoughts, our passions, our uniqueness' are what we have to offer the system."