Rent

Rent is a rock musical created by Jonathan Larson. The first readings and workshops took place in 1993 & 1994 before the musical opened off Broadway in 1996. It had a great success and therefore opened in the same year at Broadway & on a US Tour. Rent is about a group of friends struggling to survive as artists (song writer, movie maker, singer, etc); the show is also about HIV/AIDS, some of the characters have it, and one of them, Angel, dies of it during the show.
After Rent's the success, a movie was made in 2005 & the stage show was filmed in 2008. The musical recieved four Tony Awards in 1996, including best musical.

Jonathan Larson is an american composer, born in a jewish family in February 1960. He was introduced to the art, music and theatre world at a very young age. His most famous work is Rent, which was first performed off broadway in 1996. He based the story on real events that happened at this time and based the character "Mark" on his personal life experience.
Larson unexpectedly died on the 25th of January 1996, on the morning of Rent's first preview performance off Broadway.



17/09/14

Today we continued the Rent rehearsals. We had learnt "Rent" and "Seasons of Love" last week and today we kept on learning a few songs and started staging the show. We also heard what some leads had rehearsed which was really nice.

18/09/14

Today we started creating a little "dance" number for Maureen's song "Jump Over the Moon" and performed it in front of the leads.

24/09/14

Today we kept on learning the ensembles parts from Rent and spent quite a lot of time on "Christmas Bells" which is really hard, especially when half of the cast isn't paying attention...

01/10/14

Today we started staging "Rent" (the song) in the theatre & therefore making it look like something, it was really cool. We're devided in 3 groups: 1 at the right, 2 at the centre and 3 at the left of the stage. And each group has people from Mark's and Roger's singing part. I'm in Mark's singing part in group 1. Some people from each group will be on a plateform and the others will stand on the stage, I'll be standing on the stage, and I'll have the great honor to belt the end of the song at some of the audience's face! How exciting!

09/10/14

Today we learnt the final bit of "Christmas Bells" which is atrociously hard but to be honest, it's my favourite part of the show! It sounds brilliant. I feel like we're finally starting to get there, I feel as excited as I was for the first rehearsal, and I hope we can keep working like that!

15/10/14



Today we went through the staged version of "Christmas Bells" which was alright-ish. And we learnt a new song "La Vie Bohème" & also started to stage it.
We also went through all the song we had learnt so far, most of them sounded really nice!





22/10/14

Today we changed Rent's staging with Tyler. We also saw the new version of La Vie Boheme and practiced Christmas Bells.
We also had Consuela, a former student, watching the rehearsals. She gave us some tips about characterisation which was really interesting and useful.

24/11/14

We have just finished our production of Rent. The two last nights were absolutely mind blowing. I had so much fun on stage, everyone was focused and happy to be there, it was simply perfect. I really enjoyed every moment I had on stage and hope I can be part of another project soon.
It feels weird now it's over, I wish we had had more shows, I'm gonna miss the cast and Rent terribly...