Rent Tickets

Rent, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning rock musical which opened on Broadway April 29, 1996.

It is based on the Puccini opera La boheme, and tells the story of a group of struggling musicians and artists who are trying to make it in the early �90s under the shadow of the AIDS crisis. It is set in the trendy section of New York City's East Village called Alphabet City. It was one of the first musicals to expose such issues as gay, lesbian and bi-sexuality as well as trans-gender characters. The ethnically diverse cast has been a part of a movement credited with bringing theater to the younger generation. It has been compared to the effect that HAIR had for those that grew up in the �60s. It has also been said that it was successful at bringing controversial issues to a traditionally conservative medium.

The musical's tenth anniversary was celebrated in 2006, and the original Broadway cast reunited and staged a performance. The composer of Rent, Jonathan Larson, collaborated with playwright Billy Aronson to create a modern day musical based on La boheme, replacing Paris with New York, Tuberculosis with AIDS, and retaining many of the characters and plot elements. Larson died unexpectedly before the play opened. Rent opened exactly 100 years after La boheme had in 1896.