Jonathan Larson (1960-1996)

When the audience arrived at the New York Theatre Workshop on January 25, 1996, for the first preview of Rent, they knew Jonathan Larson was dead. He had collapsed after the final dress rehearsal the night before, and had died from a brain aneurysm at three o'clock that morning. The cast did not feel able to sing and dance, and decided instead to give a concert presentation. But one after another, cast members got up and began to act, and sing, and dance. At the end, the applause was overwhelming. That evening has become part of New York theater history.

Jonathan once told an interviewer, "In the theater, the old thing about how you can make a killing but you can't make a living is absolutely true. I'm living proof of that." Born in 1960, in White Plains, just north of New York City, Jonathan won a full acting scholarship to Adelphi University and immediately began to write musicals. In his senior year he wrote to his idol, Stephen Sondheim, for advice. "There are a lot more starving actors than there are starving composers," Sondheim replied.

Jonathan arrived in New York City in 1982, and immediately became part of downtown Bohemian life. He lived in a run-down loft, waited tables in a diner, and set to work on transforming American musical theater-he felt that show music had not really changed since the 1940s. In 1989, Superbia, his rock adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, opened and closed in two weeks. Approaching his thirtieth birthday and sensing something apocalyptic in the air as the new millennium loomed, he wrote another rock musical, tick, tick. BOOM!. It was not successful. In 1995, his satire, J. P. Morgan Saves the Nation, played at outdoor venues around Wall Street. He made a little money writing songs occasionally for Sesame Street, and collaborated on the video Away We Go!, but the year before his death, Jonathan Larson was still waiting tables.

In 1989 Jonathan met up with an old college friend, Billy Aronson, who was interested in creating a rock adaptation of La Boheme. Aronson wanted it to be a heart-warming story of art overcoming adversity. But Jonathan knew the hard life too well to sentimentalize it. Just as tuberculosis sweeps through Puccini's Paris, AIDS was rife in Jonathan's own community. The idea caught fire in Jonathan's imagination and by 1991, the project was his own.

In 1992 he took his first draft to Jim Nicola at the New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village. Nicola and Larson developed the piece together and a reading was staged in 1993. A young producer, Jeffrey Seller, saw its potential-the music was superb, but the story needed work. And Jonathan needed money to continue. On Stephen Sondheim's advice, he applied for, and won, a $45,000 Richard Rogers Foundation grant to support a workshop production of the play. Michael Greif was hired as director, and together he and Jonathan reshaped the story. The workshop, held in November 1994, was a success. Seller convinced two fellow producers to back the show. A dramaturg, Lynn Thompson, was hired, and over the next several months another draft was hammered out. By the late summer of 1995, the show was ready. Casting began in the fall.

The rest is history. The show opened at the New York Theatre Workshop in February, transferred to the Nederlander Theatre in April, won four Obies, four Drama Desk Awards, three Tony Awards, and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Nine years later, it is still running to packed houses.

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