It’s SUNDAY SHOWSTOPPER SNIPPET time, and, again, being October, I dedicate this column to BREAST CANCER survivors and patients. As you may recall from my introduction to this blog, and the title of this blog, I TRY to live my life by focusing on “THE LIFE IN MY YEARS.” This is a lesson that I continue to learn as a result of many events in my life, but none more significantly than my experiences as a breast cancer patient, then survivor. For anyone experiencing a significant health crisis, our nature is to fast forward to the end – regretting the things we didn’t do, the things we have planned, but fear we won’t experience.
RENT exploded on the Broadway scene in 1996. It was created as “a musical based on Puccini’s La Boheme, in which the luscious splendor of Puccini’s world would be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York.” The genius of Jonathan Larson placed the story “amid poverty, homelessness, spunky gay life, drag queens and punk” in New York’s East Village, and substituted tuberculosis, the plague from La Boheme, with HIV/AIDS.
RENT was well received by audiences of all ages and backgrounds, well beyond the ‘normal’ theatre-going public. It was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 6 Drama Desk Awards (including Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Book of a Musical) and 4 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score.
This video is NOT from the original Broadway production of Rent. In October, 2011, Idina Menzel, Rent’s original Maureen, performed, in concert, at Southern California’s Greek Theatre. I was fortunate to be at that performance (although I did NOT make this recording!). I’ve left Idina’s introductory remarks on the snippet – she dedicates it to the spirit and lessons learned from Rent’s creator, Jonathan Larson. Larson never lived to see the success of his brilliant work – he died suddenly from an aortic dissection after the show’s final dress rehearsal – the night before it’s Off-Broadway premiere. This song was the finale of the show – a song of hope, of lessons learned, of forgiving the past, of realizing that we can only live in the moment – “NO DAY BUT TODAY.”
