Dearly Beloved, We Gather Here to Say Our Goodbyes . . .

From 1999 through 2001, I had one obsession. The Broadway musical RENT. Someone gave me the highlights CD one Christmas, and I wanted to know the story behind the songs I was hearing. So I got on the internet. Oh, the lovely internet. It's a great thing for us obsessive people. I know pretty much everything there is to know about RENT.

Here it is in a nutshell: The show begins on Christmas Eve, 1989. Roommates Mark and Roger share a crappy (but huge) loft in a condemned building in NYC's East Village. Mark is an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger is a recovering heroin addict who used to be a rock musician but hasn't left the house since his girlfriend learned she had HIV and killed herself. Cheery, right?

Anyway, Mark and Roger celebrate the holiday with a bunch of their friends, including a drag queen and his (her?) boyfriend, a lawyer and her girlfriend (who is Mark's ex), and a new addition, the exotic dancer/addict who lives in Mark and Roger's building. That is a horrible synopsis. If you really want to know more, you can Google it yourself. Just so you know, there are some really dirty parts, and you get mooned. But hey, that's what happens if you rent Grease.

So, it's a musical, and it was the music that sucked me in. That, and trying to guess at the story behind the music. So I researched on the internet, and I was very intrigued by the story, as well as the story surrounding the musical. There is a common misconception that the man who wrote RENT died of AIDS. He did not. Jonathan Larson began writing RENT in his late 20s. The week before the show debuted on Broadway, Jonathan experienced symptoms that were dismissed at the ER as food poisoning. After the final rehearsal, Jonathan went home, put on water to boil for tea, and collapsed. He died of an aortic aneurysm.

This tragic history lent the show a certain aura that made it wildly popular, and opening night sold out. You know how it is--you hear about something and you're not all that interested, but if there's some kind of human interest angle, it intrigues you. Another unique characteristic of the show is the line. This bit is written into the contract, although it works a little different on Broadway. Two hours before the show starts, the first two rows of seats go on sale for twenty bucks. You all know how expensive B'way shows can be, right? So this is an awesome deal. The catch is that people start lining up really early for these tickets. REALLY early.

I saw the show seven times, which is a pretty low number for a serious fan. My friend Jessie saw the show at least 40 times, I think, and our friend Anna (we all met through the show) saw it more times than I remember. A LOT. I saw it here in C. Springs in 1999, in Denver in 2000, and in San Francisco in 2001. Here in town, I went to the show with two close friends. We underestimated the line and by the time we reached the box office window, the cheap tickets were gone, so we paid full price for orchestra seats further back.

I went to Denver with two girls I didn't know very well, one who went to the same college as me and one who traveled from Utah just to see the show. We checked into our hotel and then went straight to the theater. If you go downtown to the Denver Center of Performing Arts and you see that big archway, our line was under that archway, covered but still open to the elements. It was early December. I lost count of how many hours we waited in line--around 18, I think. On the sidewalk under the archway, between the theater and the parking garage. And it was COLD.

San Francisco was an adventure all its own. I flew by myself, and oh it was such fun. I had never flown west before. I loved it. But all I saw of San Francisco was the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance as I left the airport (which is ridiculously large and laid out in a very confusing way--I got SO lost), and the same block on Market Street in the theater district. Plus a brief view of the infamous Tenderloin. I was in San Francisco for three days and saw the show four times. It was a big deal because it was the last weekend of the national tour. If you saw the show any time after July 2001, it wasn't an Equity (professional) production. We didn't spend as much time in line because there is a law in San Fran against sleeping on the sidewalks--our line had to be very orderly and out of the way, and we couldn't line up before 5 a.m.

RENT is unique in that it almost feels like a concert, like you're at a loud concert that has a plot and some spoken dialogue. People clap and cheer more than just at the end of a song. (But singing along audibly is discouraged--I mean, you don't go to a show to hear the people around you sing.) Sitting in the front two rows is a pretty unique experience too. You're close enough for the actors to make eye contact with you, which they do. If they've seen you around the theater, they'll smile or wink too. It's that level of connection, I think, the actors with the audience, and the audience with each other, that sets RENT apart from other shows.

I'm writing this blog because even though I'm no longer the obsessed fan that I was and have not been for a long time, this era of my life officially closes tomorrow when RENT will be performed on Broadway for the last time. There was nothing like it before it appeared, and there has been nothing like it since. I don't think we'll ever see its equal.