'It was a lot of fun to actually be able to practically apply my research of partying,' she says, laughing. 'I remember being very moved, but also thinking, oh, he's so goofy, you know what I mean?' Rubin-Vega says she could relate to her part, since she was a frequent club-goer.

And so, I wanted to open my home to you.' 'Īctress Daphne Rubin-Vega, who played Mimi, was there that night. 'The distance between what we were experiencing ourselves, and as the characters was, like, tissue paper thin.'īefore rehearsals started, Larson invited the cast over to his loft, with mismatched furniture from the street, for a potluck 'peasant's feast.' Rapp remembers, 'he gave us this really lovely toast, which was, like, 'You are bringing to life my friends, some of whom are friends that I've lost. 'There was an incredible mixture of life, matching art, matching life,' actor Anthony Rapp recalls of Rent's first performance. And then George got it to me.' Nicola was intrigued with the early draft and the theater embarked on a development process, sponsoring readings and workshops. And he was very excited because he had this thing set in the East Village and he was looking for the right theater in the East Village to do it. Nicola says, Larson 'walked in and saw his friend and our production manager, George Xenos. As their theater was being constructed on E. Jim Nicola, who's artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, where Rent premiered, says the script came to them by lucky accident. 'He knew as much about Billy Joel's piano playing as he knew about Sondheim's lyric writing. 'It really begins and ends with Jonathan's writing as a great composer and a great lyricist,' says Tim Weil, who was the show's music director/keyboard player/arranger. I spoke with some of the people who were there that night. Early that morning, Larson died of an aortic aneurysm. It became an international phenomenon, winning the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, among others, but the performance almost didn't happen. The show was a retelling of La Boheme, set on the Lower East Side of New York, as people were dying of AIDS. Friends and family filed into a small off-Broadway theater to see Rent. 25, 1996, a new rock musical by a little-known writer, Jonathan Larson, gave its first performance. I knew this world.' She's pictured above with Adam Pascal in New York Theatre Workshop's 1996 production of Rent.

'It was a lot of fun to actually be able to practically apply my research of partying.

Larson rent