‘Rent’ hits CU stage with diverse cast
Production is one of 50 events marking 50th anniversary of the Department of Theatre and Dance
By Clint Talbott
At first, the student actor couldn’t get a line to a song from “Rent” quite right. It’s not that she didn’t know the material. It’s that she knew it too well.
“She’d been listening to the musical CD since she was 10,” notes Bud Coleman, chair of CU’s Department of Theatre and Dance and director of the department’s spring production of “Rent.”
“Rent,” the smash Broadway hit by Jonathan Larson, debuted in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical. It was immortalized on DVD and CD.
“Half the cast knows all the lyrics to all the songs,” Coleman notes. “For some of the students, this musical is in their DNA.” In that sense, it’s almost as if the cast had spent years preparing for their roles in “Rent.”
But this can be an issue, as the CD musical performances are not quite identical to the score. Additionally, Coleman is striving not to replicate the Broadway production. Like any good director, his production reflects his interpretation of the musical, which in its written form is a blueprint upon which a director builds.
Over time, the student actors realize this is their production, not a re-enactment of the Broadway show.
“Rent,” which is loosely based on Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” focuses on modern-day bohemians in New York’s Lower East Side. It chronicles the lives of a group of friends, and its themes include AIDS, homosexuality and inter-racial dating.
As Coleman notes, AIDS had been in the public consciousness for almost two decades at the debut of “Rent.” Homosexuality and inter-racial dating were no longer seen as shocking, at least in the context of Manhattan.
Coleman contends that “Rent” is in some ways similar to “Hair,” the 1960s “tribal love rock musical.” Both musicals deal with serious social issues (war and sexuality) and tapped into contemporary popular sentiments.
Coleman notes that both musicals are upbeat and life-affirming and are about young people. And though the subject matter of “Rent” might be seen as controversial, he adds, two things mitigate the potential for shock.
One is that no one “comes out” during the performance; the sexuality of the characters is clear at the outset of the musical and does not contribute to the dramatic tension. The same is true of the characters who are HIV-positive or have AIDS; those conditions pre-exist the beginning of the narrative.
Additionally, Coleman says, major themes of “Rent” are non-controversial: being supportive of friends and being a mature partner. “It’s hard for people to say, ‘I don’t like that message.’”
CU’s production of “Rent” includes 23 student performers, at least one-third of whom are non-theatre majors. While theatre majors make up the cast of most theatre-department productions, CU’s “Rent” includes students majoring in film studies, ethnic studies, business, MCDB, French, Italian and political science.
Coleman wanted a diverse cast “to be reflective of the show.”
The diversity of majors is significant in part because of the time commitment. Since December, the cast has rehearsed 20 hours per week, from 7 to 11 p.m. five days a week.
One student actor leaves rehearsal at 11 p.m., goes to work a graveyard shift at a local hotel, attends class during the day and repeats the cycle.
“Rent” includes 40 songs plus dancing choreographed by Erika Randall, assistant professor of dance.
Like Coleman, Randall lived in New York in the early ‘90s. Randall says “Rent” was “hugely important to me as a dancer living in New York in the early ‘90s, when the story of the play takes place.”
At the time, the AIDS epidemic was looming large, “defining so much of the world around us, especially in the theatre and dance communities, where we lost vital members of our communities right and left to the disease.”
Now that “Rent” has been released as a film, Randall says the musical has been adopted by today’s college students. “What thrills me most about this generation’s response to ‘Rent’ is their ability to be open to the gender and sexuality issues. These kids are much more fluid and accepting, singing ‘Take Me or Leave Me’ at the top of their lungs through the halls without a care that it is a song sung by two women for each other.”
Randall adds that theatre, music and dance can literally move people into new places of awareness and comfort zones through the “kinesthetic intelligences and joys of our forms.”
That is how “folks who haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes are now dancing in them—learning, transformation and acceptance becomes powerfully possible and vital.”
Coleman, who was a 2009-10 Fulbright Scholar in Japan, notes that the production of “Rent” is part of the Department of Theatre and Dance’s celebration of its 50th anniversary. To mark the milestone, the department is doing 50 events—including theatre and dance productions and guest speakers.
“We’re looking for a season that would hopefully showcase all of our parts in a different way,” Coleman says. “We’ve got something old, we’ve got something new, we’ve got something borrowed and something blue.”
“Rent,” the musical, is being performed in the University Theatre on campus on Feb. 10-12, 16-19 and 23-26 at 7:30 p.m. Matinee performances are also scheduled for Feb. 20 and 27 at 2 p.m. For more information, call 303-492-8181 or see http://www.colorado.edu/theatredance/theatre/Production6.html.