by Lindsey Unterberger
Journal Sentinel
October 15, 2000

Beginning Tuesday, hundreds of teens are expected to be waiting in line for discounted tickets to the award-winning musical "Rent" at Milwaukee's Riverside Theatre. In between traveling performances, Matt Caplan, who plays filmmaker Mark Cohen in the production, talked with Jump writer Lindsey Unterberger. Here is part of their conversation:

Q: What's your background? Have you always wanted to go into acting?

A. Yeah, it's pretty much been all I've ever been able to do, short of music.

I've always loved music and singing and that sort of thing. In elementary school, I went to a private school that was doing a Christmas musical, and I figured since I like to sing, I would go ahead and audition. And I thought maybe I could do this acting thing, too.

I was very young at the time. But I auditioned and got the part I wanted to, and so I went out on stage and pretty much have been acting ever since. I really enjoyed it, and my mother says that as soon as she saw me in that little play, she decided that she would support me if that's what I decided I wanted to do. She herself was an actress, so I had a lot of support from my parents when I was growing up.

I ended up going to a place called the Governor's Magnet School for the Arts when I hit high school. . . . I had done some community theater and some plays locally, but my real theater training began there, at the magnet school. I would go to regular school for the first part of the day and then I would go to the magnet school for the second part. That happened for all four years of my high school tenure, I guess you could say. And that's where I got most of my training and learned everything from monologue to scene study to mask class and stage combat, voice and all sorts of stuff. It was a great program.

It was publicly funded, so it was free and we had a visiting artist program, so all of our teachers were actors themselves, or musical directors or dancers or professionals working in the city. So I really got exposed to what it would be like to make a career out of it, and I decided to do it.

So I moved to New York out of high school. I had applied to colleges and got accepted and was all prepared to go to a college in D.C. But I just decided at the last minute to move to New York and wait tables and try to audition, because I just felt like it was my time to do that.

Q. Are you happy with your decision?

A. Yeah, very much so. Lord knows I certainly wouldn't be in "Rent" right now if I had gone to college.

Q. How old are you?

A. 21.

A. Umm, it's hard to say. It's such an actor-specific thing, except to say: Be open to any form of criticism that anyone might throw your way. And take everything with a grain of salt. And the most important thing, generally speaking, as an artist is to be totally honest with yourself. If you feel like you should go in a certain direction with your art but you've always said otherwise, so you have difficulty committing to what your gut feeling is, then decide if what you're doing is really the right thing. Always be honest with yourself and other people about your art. Listen to what other people have to say, but don't take things too personally.

Q. Why do you think that "Rent" has such a widespread teen following?

A. Well, I mean, certainly it's a show in which the cast is close to being teenagers themselves. In fact, some of them are teenagers. Mimi is 19 in the show. It's a very raw show that doesn't beat around the bush about the issues facing teenagers today. The show is placed in the East Village of New York, so it exudes a bit more raw body sort of energy than perhaps you might find in a place like South Bend, Ind., where I am right now. But generally speaking, young people can identify with all the issues that they're talking about. Issues about drugs, sex and being in the big crazy world. Having only been there for a few years, I'm already having difficulty paying rent, and the show focuses on this group of friends who are very close to each other. Their relationships get all skewed and there are love triangles, and there is just so much with which to identify.

Q. Speaking of identification, has there ever been a time when you have identified with your character?

A. Sure, I mean, insomuch as I believe that Mark is a bit of an awkward human being, and I think that I'm certainly awkward. He is certainly a lot more fun-loving than I would ever be, jumping on the table and dancing around. But I've certainly had trouble paying rent before, and, like, I've had worries about having a bad week waiting tables and wondering if I was going to be able to make my rent. And, yeah, I've certainly felt like Mark before, as far as his roommate Roger is concerned. You have that one friend who always seems to be going through some sort of trouble and so you, through no fault of your own, get sort of shoved into a caretaker position in some circle of friends because you realize that someone has to be that person. So certainly, I, like Mark, have been in the position to console my friends and often wondered if my own feelings were being neglected, but hopefully without too much self-pity involved.

Q. Now that you're traveling on the road, what's it like? What advantages and disadvantages are there?

A. It's just what you'd expect of any American tour where you spend a week in every city. It's amazing to see the country, and I will always be thankful that I was given the opportunity to tour as opposed to being in one location, for that reason. But it's infuriating to live out of two suitcases and a guitar, or two as I've just bought another one, which Lord knows how I'm going to carry it around. You sort of reach your wits' end after a while with the limited spaces with which you're presented. You can only carry around so much, and you're a person like everyone else who likes to have not just clothes and essentials. You like to have a nice closet and somewhere to put your stuff. And you miss the ones you love. It's difficult to get time off in a tour scenario, and even when you do, it's always a flight away to go visit anybody that you love. It's a bit crazy.

Q. Can you explain to me a little bit about the $20 tickets that are sold for the show? And do you think that they add to the show's quality and value?

A. Certainly, insomuch as the energy of the audience is always elevated when the two front rows are filled with young people who've been waiting several hours to see the show. I, myself, was a fan of the show and waited in line in New York. When I was in high school, I took a trip to New York, and I'd always loved the music to the show, and I waited in line, and that's how I saw it my first time. I realized the effect that the show has. If you see it for the very first time, it's earth-shattering. Jonathan's music (a reference to composer Jonathan Larson) is so powerful, and the show is such a visual smorgasbord of activity pretty much at any given time, without being bawdy because it's a unit set. The show is just very powerful and very effective, and whoever waits in line for those $20 tickets knows how powerful it is, and they're always very energetic, and they're certainly part of the audience we're trying to reach. I always say that "Rent" is almost evangelical in its nature. There is this strong message that we're trying to spread to everybody through our show. The $20 ticket line is part of the phenomenon, and it's part of the fun.

Q. What is the strong message that you want the audience to come away with after seeing "Rent?"

A. It's a question that gets asked all the time, and it's hard to narrow it down without being somewhat trite. The message, I suppose, would be "No day but today." That today is the most important day, and that you should always live your life being honest with yourself and being in the moment and that sort of thing. At least that's how I apply a lot of it. But it also has messages, obviously about love. It's about measuring your life and love, and that life is short, and that what's important is what we do with the time we have and what we do with the people who are in our lives during that short amount of time we're given.