I'm probably not alone in consistently including RENT in my Mount Rushmore of musicals. It is, without a doubt, foundational for me.
After RENT's 30th anniversary concert on Monday night, I've been reflecting on the impact it's had on my life as an artist and human being. And while I typically like to keep Fourth Wall zoomed out on the industry or business as a whole, I thought I'd take this opportunity to get slightly more personal, adding to the chorus of RENT-related stories that have flooded social media this past week.
So this week, a little love letter to the rock musical that rocked my world three times over.
Viva la vie bohème.
By November 2005, I was already a hardcore theater kid. Children's theater, community theater, and school plays had become my safe space, and musicals were my deepest obsession.
Eighth grade was pivotal for a lot of reasons. Predominantly because I now had to make a choice between two extracurricular commitments that I'd been juggling fairly well: theater and ice hockey.
In retrospect the decision seems obvious, but I can't emphasize enough how much this choice weighed on me. Both were core to my identity, and having to drop one or the other felt like I'd be losing a part of myself.
In tandem, I had inklings that my sexuality wasn't straightforward. Puberty was in full swing and I was feeling more things, more deeply, in a way that I could no longer ignore or push away.
Then, RENT (the movie). Of course I knew "Seasons of Love," but I hadn't been formally exposed to the piece as a whole, and upon seeing and hearing it for the first time, my world turned upside down.
Collins and Angel were the first queer love story I'd ever seen. They were so...real. So true to themselves. I wondered if that was possible for me. To be able to fully exist, honestly, and be loved by another man.
Quickly thereafter I bought the two-disc original cast recording, and the choice that had weighed on me so heavily made itself: I hung up my skates and went all in on theater.
And I took the first baby steps toward coming out to my closest friends and family.
I know now that opinions of the movie adaptation are widely varied and I recognize my bias, but it's clear to me that the film and subsequent deep dive into the stage version completely changed the course of my life.
RENT: School Edition first became available in the 2008-2009 school year. I was a junior, a full-blown drama kid, deeply invested in our yearly high school musical, which was a shared production between Glenbrook North and our sister school, Glenbrook South.
Each year the production would switch locations (and teachers in charge), and for my senior year it was back at North. If my memory serves, we campaigned hard (begged endlessly) for RENT to be the pick, only to be told that this was a pipe dream worth letting go of.
They fooled us. RENT it was, and the thought of only getting to play one of these characters tortured me. If I was Mark, I wouldn't get to sing "One Song Glory." If I was Roger, I wouldn't get to sing the beginning of "La Vie Bohème." My director had a different idea: Collins. A role and a song, she said, that would stop the show.
Not dissimilar to my first run-in with RENT, it changed what I thought was possible within myself. The "I'll Cover You" reprise was the hardest song I'd ever sung—challenging me to learn how to use my voice in a whole new way. I was out by then, but playing a queer person, on stage, in front of my entire hometown, was something I never would've contemplated doing of my own volition.
For those reasons and more, it's one of my most precious pre-college memories. I even asked my date to prom with an all-male version of "Out Tonight," complete with lights, costumes, and choreography.
You can only imagine the tears we cried singing "I die without you" in the finale on closing night.
Thirteen years later, in the summer of 2023, I played Roger at Paper Mill Playhouse.
It was the biggest job I'd ever booked. Up to that point, I hadn't done theater anywhere near New York City. And somewhere along the way I'd started to quietly wonder whether what I had to offer (my voice, my presence) was worth anything to this industry at all.
The RENT team (our director Zi Alikhan, music director Amanda Morton, and choreographer Steph Paul) saw something in me that I didn't wholly believe in yet. They believed it first.
And once again, RENT asked me for something I wasn't sure I had. Roger's vocals live way outside of what I thought I was capable of, and I was forced to get back into lessons with a voice teacher who changed my relationship to my instrument completely.
Then came tech. Long, hard, late hours in Millburn, New Jersey. Tech is notoriously my least favorite part of the process: the waiting, the standing around, the feeling that as actors we're basically chess pieces.
But the team spent SO much time on "One Song Glory." I was stunned by how invested they were in making sure it landed. They treated an early "I Want" song like one of the most important moments in the story.
It was a test of my patience and my trust. It was also the clearest sign yet that the song I was carrying was worth all that time. Which meant, maybe, so was I.
Singing "One Song Glory" eight times a week, on stage alone, for a house of nearly 1,200 seats surely set me up for what was to come. A few months later I found myself touring the country with Company, singing another show-stopper, "Getting Married Today." A job I'm convinced I booked because of what the RENT team saw in me.
This summer, I watched most of the original company reunite at The Festival, a weekend of Broadway up in Kingston, New York. On Monday night, I watched the 30th anniversary concert from my couch: three Maureens sharing "Over the Moon," mics cutting out, a stage so full of Rogers and Mimis and Collinses that they had to take turns. It was delightfully messy. Which is to say, it was very RENT.
For me, all roads lead back to RENT.
Every time I come in contact with this piece, I learn something new about it, and something new about myself.
It always asks me for something I'm not sure I have.
And every time, I find out I do.
Everything is RENT.
See you next week ♥️
—Matt
RENT has always been a winner!! The best! Still is!! Just like you!!
I felt like I lived all my lifetimes watching the 30th anniversary of Rent. That show raised me.