Burnette, 58, is a trial lawyer and travels doing pro bono work for death-row inmates.  His office is a montage of papers and books, files and newspapers.  On the walls are photos of Burnette in his days as a marathon runner.  And at various places in the room there is "Rent" memorabilia - a poster, a baseball hat, a coffee cup, a shoulder bag.  He saw the play for the first time a few years ago when he was in new york on business.  "I sat there and said to myself, ‘God.  What is this?'  I was fascinated.  It's powerful.  From then on I've seen it in a lot of different places."  

I asked how many times and he hedged.  "Just say ‘quite a few'". I asked the question again, and after getting the same response, a few minutes later I tried a third time.  Finally - reluctantly, sheepishly - Burnette said: "I've seen it 101 times in nine cities."  And then he said: "When you write this in the aper, don't make me sound like too much of a wierdo."  I promised to do what i could, given what I had to work with. 

In fact, Burnette's not a wierdo.  He just got caught up in this "Rent" thing.  He's not alone.  There's a cult of rentheads out there that follow the play from city to city - and they're coming this way next month for the 8-show run.  "Rent" is the story of folks trying to scratch out a life in manhattan's east village.  It's "La Boheme" in the 90's, and it's doing for broadway musicals what "Hair" did in the 60's - bringing in large numbers of young people. 

Now seven or eight touring companies are taking the play around the world - and the large numbers are as evident in Des Moines and Cincinnati as they are in London and Tokyo.  And like "Hair", it puts the issues of the day right in your face - particularly those issues relevant to young people living in the east village: AIDS, homelessness, love, poverty, drug addiction, sexuality of all persuasions. 

There's also a subtext here, a mystique.  Jonathan larson, who wrote the book and score, died of a heart aneurism the night of the final dress rehearsal and never got to see his play open.  Larson, 35, was a product of that downtown culture.  He pretty much died broke.  But since his death three years ago this week, the play's won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, several tonys and a subway carload of other awards.

And after his death it was decided that at every performance the first two rows would be sold for $20 a ticket to walkups on the night of the show.  So the rentheds camp out - sometimes for days - to buy one of those 30 or so tickets.  They are called rush tickets, and Frank Burnette has been on the rush line and slept overnight outside theatres in D.C. and Detroit, in Chicago once and St. Paul twice.  And in other places.  It is not something he can easily explain.  "I get - and I probably shouldn't say this - but i get what some people get from going to church.  It never fails to give me an emotional charge.  If it does (fail), i won't go back." 

Jennifer Larson handles PR for the Des Moines Civic Center, and she can't remember anything like this.  Even before it was announced that "Rent" would play here from February 16 through 21, the word got out on the renthead network and the phone calls and emails were coming in.  And then there's the question of dealing with 100 or so rentheads camping out in Des Moines in February. 

Larson says they're trying to broker a deal that will make use of the skywalk and - if that fails - the theatre lobby.  Larson said she'll tap into Burnette's expertise and find out how it's been done in other cities.  And there's one more piece to this.  Call
it the Iowa angle.  "Rent" is part of a four play civic center package that includes tickets to "Annie", "The King and I", and "Chicago".  There was some concern that folks who get a kick out of "Annie" might be slow to embrace a rock opera that deals honestly with cross-dressers and drug addicts.  So the civic center is offering to give folks credit toward another play if the opt out of "Rent".  At last word there were no takers.