Jonathan Larson’s Rent began in collaboration with playwright Billy Aronson, who wanted to write an updated version of Puccini’s La Bohème. Larson took over the project and throughout the 1990s he created the piece, while supporting himself as a waiter. It took seven years to complete with more collaborators, many rewrites and much re-structuring as well as a $45,000 grant from the Richard Rodgers Foundation. On Jan. 24, 1996, after the final dress rehearsal for the Off-Broadway opening, Larson was interviewed about the show by The New York Times and went home exhausted and happy. He died the next morning from an aortic aneurysm. But Rent went on to become a global phenomenon and to win just about every prize available to a dramatic work: the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Obie Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

The musical and dramatic sources for Rent are varied and include elements from Larson’s own experience of living poor under harsh conditions. But many of the characters, plot lines and even some melodies are directly based on Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, which premiered almost exactly 100 years earlier in Turin on Feb. 1, 1896. Paris in the late 1800s has become New York City’s East Village at the end of the 20th century. Tuberculosis, the “plague” of Puccini’s opera, is replaced by AIDS and more specifically, the AIDS of New York City in the 1990s. When the syndrome first appeared in the early 1980s, it was believed to be a manageable disease among a marginal population, but by 1990 it had grown to a full blown epidemic in many parts of the world. Compellingly captured in Rent is the strong sense of community among those living with AIDS at that time. But it has been written by many that fear was the pervading emotion for gays and their allies. Being in close relationship was no longer safe. Those who lost friends but survived felt guilty and depressed.

In recent years antiretroviral drug treatments have been developed, but there is still no vaccine and no cure. Since 2000 there has been a new surge of AIDS which is not confined to marginal or high risk groups. Government funding for research and other support has not been close to adequate. The Ryan White Care Act to improve care for low-income victims of the disease was first enacted in 1991(during the first Bush’s administration) and has been reauthorized several times, most recently, this past October. During his presidency, George W. Bush promoted increased funding for global AIDS programs, but was not an advocate for funding research or sexual education programs in the US. President Obama has put forth a comprehensive plan for fighting HIV/AIDS worldwide which includes programs for research, care and prevention – in April of this year he announced his intention to put AIDS “back on the nation’s radar.” There is much to be done.

During the lengthy rewriting process of the show, one of his collaborators suggested to Jonathan Larson that he create a one-sentence summary of the story of Rent. This was what he wrote: “Rent is about a community celebrating life, in the face of death and AIDS, at the turn of the century.” After Larson died and the decision was made to go on, Daphne Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi, said that “it let us remember that the bottom line is what you do with this experience, because tomorrow isn’t promised you.”