One of the most iconic and important pieces of musical theater ever made, Rent is an absolute powerhouse of a show. Opening in 1996 and famously written by composer and playwright Jonathan Larson, the show is a landmark for the LGBTQ+ community as it follows a chosen family living in the East Village during the AIDS crisis. Any actor who gets the chance to be a part of a production of this show has big shoes to fill, with the original Broadway cast consisting of names like Adam Pascal, Idina Menzel, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia. This past week, the talented actors of Pace University’s Sands College of Performing Arts B.F.A program opened their production of Rent at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.
While watching this rendition of the show, I kept having to remind myself that I was not watching even an off-Broadway production, but a cast of college students studying the craft of acting as we speak. The talent in this program and on that stage was electrifying. The subject matter of Rent, which includes addiction, disease, heartbreak, and love, is daunting for any actor to tackle, let alone a student, but not for these actors. Every piece of music and word of dialogue was handled with such grace and care, and you could feel the love they all have for their community radiating off the stage and into the audience. I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard to connect to a story such as this one, as Rent remains poignant and timely as much in this current era as it did in the ‘90s.
Alec Lai, junior B.F.A actor and someone I’m lucky to call a friend, played the role of Angel and absolutely took my breath away. Angel, in many ways, is the heartbeat within the cast and in the storyline, and Lai captures their gentleness and vulnerability beautifully. The experience of putting on the show was very important to them.
“To get to be with my Pace community, my acting community, and tell this story, to feel the ways the story changes us and how we change the story, is just really exciting,” said Lai.
As Rent is a definite period piece, they did a lot of research on drag queens of the ‘90s to do justice to the character as a sort of cultural artifact, but also to understand how they wanted to shape their own interpretation of the character. They were moved by how relevant their progressive efforts of the past still are to today.
“The character was very affirming because it was a part of me that I hadn’t really gotten the chance to fully explore before,” explained Lai. To pay homage to their own Chinese culture, they were excited to wear a traditional dress during “La Vie Boheme,” a small way to make Angel even more their own.
Devastatingly, in the early hours before Rent’s opening night, students learned of the passing of their beloved professor and theater dramaturg, Morgan Jenness. Jenness had previously worked on the original production of Rent, and had been expressing their excitement and support for their students in the weeks prior to opening. In an emotional tribute to them, the cast wrote Jenness’ name in big, bold letters across a set centerpiece for the audience to see. As Angel gazes down over the cast at the end of Act II, Jenness’ presence was felt just as powerfully.
Emma Huffman, another junior B.F.A actor at Pace, was emotionally moved by watching her community come together at this hard time, and the production as a whole.
“A musical that talks about the state of America at the end of the millennium over 20 years ago, and you feel a similar unrest in the people of our nation now. Activism is always in art because it is always in life. Morgan Jenness was a firm believer of that. They devoted their life to ensuring theater history, and thus, history in general, would live, breathe, and change with us,” said Huffman.
Lai reflected in a similar vein, saying, “It puts into perspective for me… that we have to constantly give voice to that time and constantly be depicting those prejudiced and systematically dysfunctional periods in history, so that they don’t happen again… [and to] inform ourselves about how to move into the future.”
While love may measure a year in the life, as long as theater exists, we will always be reminded of those who came before us, and tell their stories.