Mama’spiration 04 - Rent/Jonathan Larson
Destiny. Friends. Death. Music. Art. Love.
In the last couple of months, this are the basic pillars in which my life is revolving around.
This things were first taught to me, and brought to my attention for that matter, by one piece of musical theater and one man
and his magnum opus
Rent was where my generation clashed with musical theater. Like a Michael Bay film, everything was turned upside down in a mess of sound, disease, art, bohemia and love from that moment on.
For those who know me, they know how much I love musicals, they also know how much I wish there were more musicals like Rent around (right now we can always count with my friend Joe Iconis [The Black Suits, Bloodsong of Love] , and great artists like Duncan Sheik [Spring Awakening] and Stew [Passing Strange]).
The Who tried with Tommy, doing a rock opera before. But it wasn’t until 1995 that the concept was going to reach it’s peak with Larson’s Rent.
I saw it for the first time in portuguese. It was an old theater in São Paulo and I it was my field trip I took with my theater school peeps. I remember that the crew was having a lot of technical difficulties but all of that was overshadow by the strength of the material. I immediately hunted a copy of the original broadway recording and fell in love with it. It wasn’t until 5 years later when I got around to see how you should have seen it. On Broadway. On the great Nederlander Theatre.
Between the brazilian and us experiences I got obsessed with the material. I got every single book I could on it. Internet articles. Blog posts. I studied the play with all my heart. And everything that I learned about it, taught me valuable lessons that I use everyday on my artistic and civilian life. Specially on periods like the one I’m going through right now, I get really into Rent. On periods like this, I’m Mark. I’m Marcello. I’m a XX century filmmaker. I’m a XIX century poet. I’m in an american rock opera. I’m in an italian opera.
I had 5 people close to me die in the last month. I fell in love. I had my heart broken. I made great new friends. I formed a band. I’m writing a book and 2 new films. And yet there’s still something missing. Maybe is the thing Angel and Collins had. Maybe is what Maureen and Mark (or Joanne) never did, or what Roger sang to Mimi. But in the end, I always look back to the lessons that it was taught to me by this groups of characters, and their creator, to try to look for an answer.
Do you wanna know what this lessons are? Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Destiny
In five hundred twenty-five thousand Six hundred minutes How do you measure A year in the life?
How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love
Seasons of love. Seasons of love
Jonathan Larson taught me about destiny. He asked in the opening song of the second act of Rent “How do you measure a year in a life?”.
As can see in the picture that opens this post , Jon died at the awfully young age of 36. In which he spent 15 of those years working to revolutionize the american musical theater.
His sister, Julie Larson McCollum, once said
It took my brother Jonnie fifteen years of really hard work to become an overnight sensation.
He knew what he was doing and, even thou, he hated working at the Moondance Diner (which he did for nine years), he had to do that just so he could have as much free time as possible for his music and art.
Talking to some people that knew he, you discovered he could be the sweetest or the most annoying person you ever met, all at the same time. But he had a goal. He wanted to do it right.
He got mentored by the great Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music), even winning the prestigious award named after his mentor.
He had a couple of little plays produced but it wasn’t enough. And then it came. In the late 1980’s, a guy named Billy Aronson came up with the idea of doing a modern day update on one of Puccini’s most well known operas La Bohème. He was looking for a composer to join him in this endeavor and after having a lot of people mention Jon’s name, he met with him and decided to close the deal.
Jon was so passionate with the material, that just after a couple of meetings they were fighting like a married couple. Billy had his ideas, Jon had his own and they decided to part ways and the project was dead. Until a couple of years later when Jon asked Billy if he could take the concept and make it his own. Billy agreed and right there Rent was born.
If it wasn’t for all the years in that diner, or the years of living in almost moneyless in an “artist loft”, or having open minded parents and writing non-stop plays and songs that would never find the light of day, Rent would not have existed. As Rent wasn’t only an update on a XIX opera, but it was mainly Jonathan’s life story.
And here’s where Destiny comes into hand. He put himself and his life into that show. Every single character, storyline, set was modeled after someone he had met, something he had lived and somewhere he had been. Even the death of the most beloved character in the play, Angel, was to be mirrored by his own death.
He died on the morning of the show’s opening on it’s Off-Broadway run on January 25, 1996. He was home making some tea when he suffered a heart attack caused by some easily curable heart disorder. Even with his death the show went on. I saw a tape a couple of years ago with the recording of that first performance (which is causing me goosebumps just by thinking of it) and I have to tell you that it was one of the most raw performances that I ever saw in my life. Those young actors singing their hearts out for the man that put his heart in those songs. Is at the same time inspiring and heartbreaking.
By the time of his death, he was working non-stop on Rent for 7 years. He was in New York trying to break into business for 15. And on the day he became a sensation, he died.
I’m not a person who believes in coincidences. I’m a very spiritual person and I believe that everything happens for a reason. In this case Jonathan didn’t need to see his work up on that stage. He didn’t need to read the reviews. To see the play turning itself into one of Broadway’s most beloved shows, or turning itself into the 8th longest running show ever on Broadway’s stage. No. He said he was going to be revolution. He was going to make everything new again.
And in the end he did.
2. Friends
For Being an US for once, instead of a Them!
Both La Bohème and Rent are about the ultimate love and friendship.
The characters families are only overheard on the telephone and never in person. This is because the characters are each other families. Roger, Mark, Tom Collins, Maureen, Joanne, Mimi, Angel and even Benny they chose to be with one another.
There’re fewer things as powerful as this in life, and in this play this is multiply by a thousand.
Mark, the filmmaker narrator (and the character I identify more with for a couple of obvious reasons), are always looking to keep the family together. Through high and lows. Winter to winter and from December 24th 9pm, to the next December 24th 10pm.
Also with the “Life Support” Group, a group of HIV positive people that come together in an AA type of meeting so they can support each other in their journey through life and disease.
This was one of the most important ideals in Jon’s life and that carries to the play. Even with them screwing everything up, they know they don’t have anything to look up for but each other. And as they grow apart with a tragedy, Angel’s death, they are brought together with another one, Mimi’s semi-death.
3. Death
There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss
no other road
no other way
NO DAY BUT TODAY
Everyone in the play has AIDS, but Mark (the fact was highlighted in a great spoof on the opening scene of the puppet masterpiece Team America). So the theme of finitude, of endings, of how to live a proper live are always hovering the play. And it’s not only about physical death that they are talking about here. Mark has an “artistic death” by accepting to work for the “three piece suits” he always made fun of. The bohemian ideals, that they all share, are also always in the brink of imploding. Not to mention love, but this deserves a topic of it’s own.
By the time I saw Rent, I had never came in contact with death. My grandmother had died, but I was shielded by the whole experience. So when Angel dies, this got me so hard. And to this day my favorite song of the whole play is “I’ll Cover You (Reprise)”. Which happens in Angel’s wake and it’s just heartbreaking to see Collins sing goodbye to the love of his life and all of the others losing their best friend. Losing a little of the sunshine of their lifes. The song is ridiculously beautiful and I keep turning to it as often I as I can.
Add this to Jon’s own death on the brink of him making it big and on the eve of the opening of his masterpiece and you start to understand what I mean.
4. Music
Rent was the first musical I remember buying the soundtrack for. Also is the first one I remember in which the songs were basically pop tunes that you could listen to it in the radio and you would never imagine it was a showtune. This was a life changing experience for me, as I always loved musicals, but I never really liked the “classics” like Phantom of the Opera, Cats and such musicals that are hold to such high stem to musical lovers.
After I listen to the recordings obsessively, I decided to that this is what I wanted to do. It took me 13 years to get to it. But now it’s finally time to get cranking.
5. Art
Bohemia, Bohemia / Is a fallacy in your head / This is Calcutta / Bohemia is dead
Bohemians. They are all bohemians. All the characters in the play are bohemians and artists in their own way. Mark, is a filmmaker. Roger, a musician. Mimi, a (strip) dancer. Maureen, a performance artist. Angel, is a drag queen. Benny, it’s an art mogul (“in his own mind”). Collins, is a philosopher. Maureen, a lawyer (and Maureen’s sidekick on her shows).
This were real people in the Jon’s life. People he worked with. He talked with. He interact with. He fell in love with. And it was because of art.
I have a rocky relationship with art. As I really think it was one of the reasons we grew so apart as a species. I really do think (me and Plato for that matter) that a world without artist could be a better more “just” world. And this were my problem lives. How can I believe in such a thing, and defend it with all my strength, if all I know how to is Art?!
A lot of this questions are asked in the play. Even with the joy that is “La Vie Bohème”, a celebration of the artist lifestyle, the portrait that Larson paints of how truly is is still a little bleak. Roger can’t find his song. Mark can’t find his movie. What the heck, because of it they can’t even find eachother.
But in the end, they don’t give up. They stick together and chant all at once:
NO DAY BUT TODAY!
But in the end Rent is about one thing, and one thing only and that is…
6. Love
Live in my house / I’ll be your shelter/
Just pay me back / With one thousand kisses /
Be my lover and I’ll cover you…
…I think they meant it when they said you can’t buy love
Now I know you can rent it / A new lease you are my love / on life
All my life
In the end everything is about love. The love of your friends. Of your parent’s frozen pasta. Of your art. Of your music. Of your disease.
Jon had a love for his bohemian lifestyle and everyone in his life that loved him loved it as well. He loved theatre. He loved music. And above all he loved Musicals.
This is the core of Rent. Everyone in the play is in love by something or someone. And even being the end of the XX century some taboos were still hunting society. So having a love triangle with a guy being dumped by a girl for another girl. Two HIV positives falling madly in love. And above all the most beautiful relationship of all being between two men.
Until to this day I’m to find a “falling in love scene” (ONCE, which will get it’s own post quite soon, may have been close) like Collins and Angel’s “I’ll Cover You”. This is type of song I would like to sing to my loved one at full lungs in the middle of the streets so everyone could see how much I love my significant other.
And this is not the only of example of love in this play. Roger’s search for the perfect song, which he finds in Mimi eye’s and love. Maureen’s coming to terms with her’s and Joanne’s differences. Mark finding his art in the lives and love of his friends.
When Jonathan was asked why he didn’t kill Mimi in the end, like it happens to her in La Bohème, he simply answer:
This musical isn’t about death. It’s about love.
AS everything in life should be…
So after this little love letter, if you still want to know more about it. Here are some stuff I recommend.
This book is one of the most awesome books on any play I’ve ever seen. The design is great. The content is fabulous. And you not only get a great overview of the creation of Rent but also the book and lyrics for it. If you are gonna get a Rent product in your lifetime, this should be it (just click in the image to go Amazon and get your copy):
Now you wanna see what this is all about. There’s a couple of ways.
First is the Motion Picture directed by Chris Columbus. Even if I’m not a huge fan of the movie itself (would have died to see a Spike Lee version of it) the movie is highly watchable and it stars most of the Original Broadway Actors. So here you can have a sense of what those people 14 years ago were all raving about.
Now, if you wanna see the great Michael Grief staging of the play. Here’s a DVD of the last performance of Rent on Broadway in 2008. It was recorded live and it’s a killer.
As you can see, I’m a huge RENTHEAD and I’m proud of it!
VIVA LA VIE BOHÈME!
m.
