by David Yonke
Toledo Blade
December 12, 1999

Not everyone is ready for Rent, but that's OK. It's part of being on the cutting edge of Broadway.

"Every now and then you will get the people who will leave at intermission, or before intermission, and God bless them, they just didn't get it," said Scott Hunt, who stars as Mark in the traveling production of the rock musical that opens Tuesday at the Stranahan Theater. "It's not everyone's cup of tea."

Fortunately for Hunt and others involved in the 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, audiences around the world are getting it - and getting back in line for more.

The musical, which will be presented Tuesday through Sunday at the Stranahan Theater, centers on a group of bohemian artists in New York's Lower East Side. It takes the conflicts and tensions of classic Broadway fare and gives them an urban and urgently modern twist.

Mark is a filmmaker who loses his girlfriend to another girl. Mimi is an exotic dancer battling drug addiction. Tom Collins, Roger, and Angel are all HIV-positive who carry their beepers to remind them when to take their AZT medication. Roger has been a recluse since his girlfriend's suicide six months ago. Angel is a transvestite.

This ain't exactly Oklahoma!

"We consider our audience to be a relatively young demographic, from high school to college," said Hunt, a native of Akron who earned a degree in musical theater from the Cincinnati Conservatory. "But in some cities, you see a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, and you think, 'Wow, this is going to be an uphill battle. But then, 15 minutes into the show, you see them laughing along with the kids and sometimes they are the first ones to stand up and applaud."

The cast's approach to the play varies somewhat according to the audience's response each night, Hunt said during an interview from a tour stop in Iowa.

"Oh, the audience is everything," Hunt said. "Some nights they're really quiet and not all that responsive but you can tell they're really intent and listening. Then the 15 of us in the cast feed off of each other's energy onstage. We have them [the audience], we don't have to push.

"Other nights, the audience is screaming their lungs out, and we go, 'Oh, it's a rock concert tonight.' I feel like a rock star, and you never have to get your energy up on nights like that."

The musical was written by Jonathan Larson, who was inspired La Boheme and drew a parallel between by Puccini's 1896 opera of poor Parisian artists and his own community of artists in New York a century later who are also struggling to pay their rent.

After the initial flash of inspiration in the early 1990s, Larson persevered through numerous rewrites and revisions, working with a series of co-writers and financial backers, until the musical earned a 1994 Richard Rodgers Award.

In a tragic twist of fate, Larson died, without warning, of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthday, just hours after the final dress rehearsal off-Broadway, and less than three weeks before Rent's Broadway premier.

In addition to the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for drama, Rent's honors include Tony Awards for best musical, best score, best book, and best featured actor in a musical; the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best musical, six Drama Desk awards, and three Obies in 1996.

Hunt plays the role of Mark, the musical's narrator and an aspiring filmmaker who is forced to choose between devoting himself to his art, or getting a job with a TV show that will pay the rent.

"I've been dreaming about Mark for a long time," Hunt said. "To sing the music and be the composer's voice onstage every night is an honor and I feel a huge responsibility. Jonathan Larson poured his hear and soul into it. We take this very seriously. We don't want people to walk out and say, 'Why did this win the Pulitzer?' "

While many Broadway musicals strive to sweep audiences away into a fantasyland where they can forget their troubles, Hunt said Rent has a more pragmatic goal.

"I have the ability to change somebody's perception, to change their view of the world. You can't do that with a lot of shows."

Hunt, 26, said he always wanted to be in theater but wasn't sure he had enough talent.

"I don't think anybody knows if they are a natural actor or actress. There are too many outside forces that block us and tell us, 'You can't do it.' "

His inspiration came from his grandfather, who talked him out of studying journalism at Ohio University and enrolling at the Cincinnati Conservatory instead.

"Fortunately, I had a grandfather who encouraged me all the time. I was going to be a journalist and critique art, but my grandfather talked me into doing it instead."