Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical by Jonathan Larson Page B

transmitter) and the hero decides not to save the world. Jon was frustrated with the progress of his career. He was about to turn thirty, was in a committed relationship with another beautiful dancer, Janet Charleston, and was still waiting tables at the Moondance Diner. And though, to Jonathan's relief, Matt O'Grady was doing well and his HIV had not progressed to AIDS, the number of reported AIDS cases had quadrupled to 117,508. One of those new cases was our good friend Alison Gertz. Ali's diagnosis and the discovery that she had become infected when she was sixteen from a single sexual encounter with a boyfriend became international news. At twenty-two she became the new face of AIDS. It was the year the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil onto the shores of Alaska and hundreds, if not thousands, of young people were killed during student protests in China's Tiananmen Square. Jon needed to say something, and though he had written many political cabarets for Adelphi University, he was anxious to start work on a new show that would create a platform for the many social issues that troubled him.
    That summer, Ira Weitzman, the musical theatre program director of Playwrights Horizons (the nonprofit theatre where Sondheim would develop many of his shows and Jonathan had received a workshop of Superbia), recommended Jonathan to playwright Billy Aronson, who was interested in creating a modern musical based on Puccini's La Boheme. After listening to some of Jonathan's music, they agreed to meet.
    Billy arrived at Jon's place on Greenwich Street shortly before dusk. Since there was no doorbell, he called from the pay phone on the corner and Jon threw down the keys. Billy made his way through the smudged halls, up the three flights of rickety stairs to meet Jon in his kitchen, which had a large four-legged bathtub in the center of it. They got some lemonade and seltzer and climbed a steep ladder to the roof. Overlooking the Hudson River, as the lights of the prison barge appeared (New York had run out of space for its more violent offenders), Billy, sitting on a crate, shared his own frustrations and fears about the arts and theatre and life.

    They agreed to work together and eventually wrote first drafts of the songs "Rent," "Santa Fe," and "I Should Tell You." They were both excited by the feel of the pieces and the vibrancy of the music. Jon suggested the title Rent and reminded Billy of its other definition: to tear apart with force or violence, an apt metaphor for the turmoil in the community they were describing. From that first meeting, Jon had strong ideas about many aspects of the show that exist in its final form, from the East Village location to the drug addiction of Mimi, and most importantly, that she lives. He felt very strongly that the show was about celebrating life. And as he and Billy continued to work into November, when the Berlin Wall fell and trumpeted the beginning of the end of the Cold War, it seemed that there may well be things to celebrate. The reinventing of a great classic like Puccini's La Boheme, based on Henri Murger's book Scenes de la Vie Boheme, with tuberculoses in Paris in the 1800s being replaced with AIDS in New York City at the end of the twentieth century, was the canvas Jon's creativity had been longing for. But as Billy and he continued to try to work through the story, with both of them new to collaborating, they found their essentially different writing styles were at odds. After a few months of working together, they recorded a demo of the first three songs and decided to pursue different projects individually.
    There was another reason that Jon took a step away from Rent. He was anxious about creating another large-scale musical that producers would shy away from. For five years, including that past September with a well-attended concert version at the Village Gate, he had heard that Superbia, with its large cast and futuristic sets, would be dauntingly expensive