University of Puget Sound
Department of Theatre Arts + The School of Music
RENT
BOOK, MUSIC, LYRICS | Jonathan Larson
DIRECTOR | Jess K Smith
MUSIC DIRECTOR | Dr. Dawn Padula
SET DESIGNER | Kurt Walls
COSTUME DESIGNER | Mishka Navarre
LIGHTING DESIGNER | Patty Mathieu
SOUND DESIGNER | Lawrence Huffines
CONDUCTOR | Dr. Gerard Morris
DANCE INSTRUCTION | Kathryn Van Meter
Performance Dates & Times
Feb. 26, 27, Mar. 3, 4, 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Mar. 6 at 2:00 p.m.
Tickets
$11 general; $7 sr. citizen (55+), non-Puget Sound student, military, and Puget Sound faculty/staff/student. Tickets sold at Wheelock Information Center, 253.879.6013, and online at tickets.pugetsound.edu. Remaining tickets available at the door.
RENT, the Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical that thrilled New York audiences for more than a decade, will be staged at University of Puget Sound this spring, marking 20years since the play first opened on Broadway.
The collaboration between the Department of Theatre Arts and School of Music will revive Jonathan Larson’s dramatic depiction of life in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in the year between Christmas Eve 1989 and Christmas Eve 1990. Inspired by Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Larson created a dramatic, yet uplifting, story using rock music to evoke the tough, angry, and terrifying reality of a world wrought with AIDS, suicide, and drug addiction—all underscored by a theme of hope.
RENT will be staged at 7:30 p.m., on Friday, Feb. 26; Saturday, Feb. 27; Thursday, March 3; Friday, March 4; and Saturday, March 5. On Sunday, March 6, there will be a 2 p.m. matinee. The performances will take place in Norton Clapp Theatre, Jones Hall. Ticket information is below.
The student-acted production is directed by Jess K Smith ’05, with music direction by Dawn Padula, and Gerard Morris conducting the School of Music musicians. Other collaborators include Kurt Walls, scenic design; Mishka Navarre, costume design; Lawrence Huffines, sound design; and Patty Mathieu, lighting design.
“This is a show about choosing life and love in the face of death and disease,” Smith said. “As Act 1 ends, riots are breaking out over housing rights, a couple shares a kiss, it begins to snow, and this community of struggling artists and activists shouts out, ‘Viva la vie bohème!’
“They build a chosen family by being an ‘us, for once, instead of a them,’ inspiring each other to live life for the present, and turn away from fear and regret for the chance to live ‘no day, but today.’”
RENT’s dramatic action takes place amid poverty, homelessness, gay life, drag culture, drug addiction, and the AIDS crisis—making it not so dissimilar from La Bohème’s setting among poor young artists and a tuberculosis plague. The iconoclastic community was familiar to the musical’s creator, who himself lived for many years as a poor artist in New York, sacrificing stability for his art.
The Tony-award winning play, first staged in 1993 and later made into a film, greatly influenced musical theater of the day by reimagining old forms, tackling new content and themes, and expanding musical and theatrical language.
Scott Miller, respected musical director, playwright, and author of several books on the theater, wrote in an essay that Larson used “the structural vocabulary of classical opera with the harmonic and rhythmic language of rock” when he created RENT. It was the first musical in decades that younger audiences really identified with, wrote Miller, and it breathed new commercial life into the Broadway musical.
The timely musical ran for 12 years on Broadway, making it the 10th longest-running Broadway show, with more than 5,000 performances. Unfortunately Larson passed away unexpectedly the night before the first preview performance, and so never had the chance to receive the significant acclaim the work garnered.