On its 30th anniversary, it still feels like so much more than a musical.
My best friend Rebecca and I paced with excitement outside the stage door of the Nederlander Theatre on 41st Street. It was the spring of 1996, and another performance of the Broadway musical Rent had just ended. A small group of us had gathered outside, waiting for the cast members to emerge. There were no flailing hands holding up phones, no selfies, no black cars waiting to whisk the actors away.
One by one, they emerged and walked away or hopped on a bike without much fanfare. Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel, both unknowns at the time, walked down the street, arms clasped, like two people newly in love. Lead actor Adam Pascal emerged in a crisp white T-shirt and headed for the nearby subway station.
Rebecca and I had seen Rent together for the first time a month earlier and had become instantly obsessed. We both bought the soundtrack, and our crushes on the blond heartthrob Roger, played by Pascal, deepened with each listen. Some nights, we’d return to the theater just in time to hear the faint finale of “No Day But Today” and watch the actors leave.
This particular night, we decided to follow Pascal, like the rebellious teenagers we were. Our adrenaline pumping, we raced behind him down the subway steps, giggling and sneaking peeks from behind the poles, until he disappeared onto the train.
Rent, composer Jonathan Larson’s modern version of Giacomo Puccini’s 19th century opera, La Bohème, depicted a group of friends living in the East Village during the HIV/AIDS crisis, struggling with drugs, relationships, and their own creativity. It broke barriers by representing people—including gay, bisexual, and trans characters—who were rarely highlighted at the time. But it also spoke to anyone who’d ever felt diminished or less than, reminding them of their worth. Though Larson tragically died before seeing its success, Rent affected a generation of people who felt like the musical was speaking directly to them.
At 16, my best friend Rebecca and I were two of them. As cultured New York City girls who’d seen many Broadway shows with our single mothers, we took our box of Playbills seriously. But this music wasn’t like Carousel, Cats, or Les Mis. The songs were edgier, sexier, and seemed to understand us better. That first night after seeing the show, we returned to her apartment for a sleepover and played the cast album from beginning to end.
“I guess you guys loved it!” Rebecca’s mom said, passing through the living room.
We saw Rent four or five more times together, darting up to the TKTS Times Square ticket booth the moment the school buzzer sounded on Fridays, hoping to snag two-for-one tickets. Back then, not too difficult a feat.
We proclaimed ourselves Rent groupies. On weekend nights we didn’t see the show, we’d be waiting at the back of the theater. Our moms—somewhat aware of our weekend adventures—were probably happy that our indulgences were relegated to musicals. At least so far.
Once, we even called Diggs (who played slimy landlord Benny), after looking up his phone number in the White Pages. Back then, it was easy. When a voice picked up after the second ring, we stood incredulous.
“Hello,” said a deep, serious voice on the other end of the kitchen phone.
“We love you, Benny!” we both yelled into the receiver. Then we quickly explained that we were huge Rent fans. The actor laughed at our brazen act, thanked us, and promptly hung up. Decades later, we’d still talk about the time two squealing teens briefly spoke with Taye Diggs on a landline.
As best friends who lived a few blocks apart and had been going to school together since we were 3 years old, Rebecca’s apartment was like my second home. We did everything together, including our first concert without parents—Oasis at Jones Beach Theater—which gave us that initial taste of freedom. We galavanted around our East Village neighborhood, cosplaying two independent New York City women.
Rent just became a part of our routine. In between after-school sports and homework, we’d play the album on Rebecca’s mom’s gigantic stereo system that took up a whole living room wall, belting out the lyrics to “Light My Candle.”
“Got a light?” I’d yell out, reciting Mimi’s (Daphne Rubin-Vega’s) first line in the duet.
“I know you, you’re, you’re shivering” she’d sing back as Roger.
Both of us perfected each line as if rehearsing for the stage ourselves. Our performance, an act of fandom and friendship.
We couldn’t exactly relate to the characters we loved. When Mimi and Roger sang about hard drugs and HIV medication, it initially went over my head. Yet, singing it somehow felt like an expression of ourselves.
Growing up, I was a curly redhead with a quirky personality. I went to school with people whose families had way more than mine and often felt like an outlier. But listening to the lyrics of Rent, I found a sense of belonging. They spoke to me when my self-esteem was still developing. I listened to Mimi’s powerful ballad “Out Tonight,” lip-synching along and dancing in my mirror at home. As she sang about howling at the moon like a cat in heat, I filled with a confidence I normally couldn’t muster.
Through all Rent’s intertwined, stigma-breaking stories, ran a thread of humanity that connected each character. This relatability has kept the musical culturally relevant. But we could’ve never known that 30 years later, thousands of self-proclaimed “Rentheads,” as some now call themselves, would be performing or sharing clips of those same iconic moments online for us all to see. But long before TikTokers performed for an audience, we sang to each other.
Recent Rent productions are reigniting a passion for the musical and introducing it to a whole new generation. It ran off-Broadway over the summer, and a West End revival starring Gaten Matarazzo of Stranger Things opened in London earlier this month. And on October 26, members of the original cast are reuniting for a one-night-only concert performance to celebrate Rent’s 30th anniversary.
For Gen Xers like me, it’s also reminiscent of a pre-social media world. I’ve realized my nostalgia isn’t only for the show, but for a more authentic time before social media changed how we interacted with art and each other.
The ritual of seeing the show, waiting for the cast, and performing the songs together helped Rebecca and I bond. Over the years, through different colleges, boyfriends, careers, and coasts, our connection remained. Even when we rarely saw each other—it is the kind of friendship in which absence had no effect.
When I found out Rent was returning for a special 30th anniversary production, I texted my old bestie. “WE HAVE TO SEE THIS!” She replied with equal excitement. “YESSSS.”
I sat stealthily at my computer as the coveted tickets went on sale, cracking my knuckles in eager anticipation. Two minutes later, to my shock, two bold words popped up on the screen: Nothing Available. The show had sold out faster than my middle-aged hands could type.
Rent was my first experience embracing a piece of art. My first dalliance with fandom. Thirty years ago, I could score tickets to the musical on a whim, the day of a performance. Now I couldn’t even get a ticket to the reunion show online months before. But shortly after the ridiculously fast sellout came an announcement: a livestream would be available to watch for $30. That would have to do.
Rent defined a cultural moment. For me, it was a time when my best friend and the hit musical were everything, and life was uncomplicated. As the lyrics to the most famous song, “Seasons of Love,” go, “Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes, how do you measure, measure a year?” The answer, Jonathan Larson told us, was “love.”
Three decades later, the teenage girl who stood at that theater door still exists. When my 2-year-old goes to sleep and my old friend arrives to watch the livestream (my apartment this time!), I’ll reconnect with that girl once more.
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