by Meredith Pierce
The Observer
October 2, 2000

From Tuesday through Thursday, "Rent" will transform the entire audience at the Morris Performing Arts Center into a herd of cattle and convince them to moo on cue.

This will be considered a minor accomplishment, however, compared to a long list of groundbreaking feats the musical has already completed. Besides dealing with several hotly debated topics in today's society, "Rent" has seized major theater awards, including the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The show premiered off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop on Feb. 13, 1996. Receiving enthusiastic reviews "Rent" became a sold-out hit instantly.

The show transferred to Broadway on April 29, 1996 and continues to sell out.

Inspired by Puccini's "La Boheme," the story takes place in New York's East Village with the majority of characters striving to make ends meet to pay the rent. This factor is compounded by drug usage and the fact that nearly all the characters are HIV positive.

The story focuses around a musician named Roger who has just recently discovered he has the virus. His roommate, Mark a filmmaker, narrates the musical by video taping much of the action as well as commenting on the
situations. The rest of the cast is composed of friends, lovers and ex-lovers of the two men.

The plot centers around how these people live with the knowledge of their inevitable untimely deaths and how life itself can be measured - in love.

The fact that "Rent" deals with these issues in a realistic and entertaining manner while capturing the culture of the time, is one reason why popularity has grown to form "Rent groupies." A Rent groupie is a person who has been motivated by the story and many of the characters.

A groupie can easily be spotted at any of the shows, especially when the performance artist, Maureen asks the audience to moo while she artistically interprets her life. A Rent groupee will many times start to moo even before she asks, and generally cheers wildly when she first appears on stage via motorcycle.

Maureen is not the only character that has inspired the groupies. Angel, a transvestite drummer, generally causes wild cheers from the crowd as well. Especially when she shows up in a candy-cane striped dress with glitter lipstick.

However, it is not just the characters that cause these groupies to get so pumped to see the show.

The music plays a huge part, creating a rock concert environment. The band, equipped with electrical guitars, play on stage at all times. The words are inspiring, causing much of the music to be an instant hit. "Light My Candle," "La Vie Boheme" and especially "Seasons of Love" are among the best.

It is the reality of "Rent," however, that a true groupie with appreciate.

When the creator Jonathan Larson said in regards to living life in the song "Another Day" that there was "no day but today" he was right.

Larson never got to see "Rent" performed on, or off-Broadway. On the morning of Jan. 25, 1996, hours after the final dress rehearsal off-Broadway, 10 days before his 36th birthday, Larson died unexpectedly of an aortic aneurysm.

But Larson lives on in "Rent" to this day. In his characters, his story and the audience they touch.

The overwhelming success of Rent can be attributed to many people and many things.

The original studio and off-Broadway director Michael Greif set a high standard for the original cast, a standard which other future companies had no choice but to meet.

However, with the nature of traveling companies, group to group certain things change.

One thing that will not change are the looks of the characters from company to company. Unusual casting traditions ensure that the characters remain similar from company to company.

Auditions for the cast are open auditions. It is also not unknown for someone who is already involved in the show to see someone who fits the look for another character and stop them in the street to tell them to audition.

The voices are extremely important in casting as well. Each character in Rent has just as distinct a vocal sound as his or her looks.

For most characters this vocal sound is much different from any other sound a theatre fan would hear on Broadway.

In addition to the dozen of awards for the controversial "Rent," Larson has also scored and wrote songs for "Sesame Street," created music for children's book-cassettes including "An American Tail" and "Land Before Time," and conceived, directed and wrote four original songs for "Away We Go!," a musical video for children.

For tickets to the show in South Bend, call (219) 245-6085. (And don't forget to moo!)