Jonathan Larson. He is the one to whom we owe our gratitude from RENT to. He was born on February 4^th , 1960, in White Plains, New York . His parents, Allan and Nanette Larson, usually took Jon and his sister to a few shows per year. Which is probably what sparked his love for theater in the first place!

                                             When Jonathan was 5 he saw a puppet show of La Boheme . (That probably help him see that there was a lot of flexibility with writing theater.)  When he entered kindergarten he was organizing his friends in productions of  “Gilligan’s Island” . By third grade he had written, directed, and starred in a play of his own. He was even photographed for the White Plains newspaper.  

                                     When Jon was in High School, he had the fame of an actor. His school didn’t even have a musical theater program until he started there. The school developed a program to accommodate his talents. Jonathan won a four year, full-tuition scholarship for acting to Adelphi University. Their program had been based on Yale’s famed School of Drama. While Jon attended Adelphi, he practically ran the place.

                                            While in college, Jon wrote musicals of his own and found he was quite good at it. His college professors remember him as the best song writer they’d ever taught. During his senior year, Jonathan wrote to his idol, Stephen Sondheim. It was the kind of letter that a young man writes when he is on the look out for a mentor. Just months before graduation, Sondheim invited Jon to his home for advice. He surprisingly advised him to stop performing. He said to him, “ There are a lot more starving actors out there than there are starving writers. “  With his degree in his hand, Jonathan came to New York City  and by 1982, was ready to succeed in real life, just as he had in academic life.   

                                                 Jon’s inspiration for RENT cam mainly from his own life. He lived a bohemian life. He and his roommates rented a scruffy apartment.  For a while they even kept an illegal  wood burning stove. He had a waiters job at a Solto’s  called the Moondance Dinner. Jon also dated a dancer who often left him for other men. Eventually she left him for another woman. The idea for the song La Vie Boheme  cam from the play of La Boheme . He and his friend Billy Aronson both had the idea for a remake of the play. However, in 1991, Jon decided to take the idea on as a solo project. He on the other hand, changed the characters disease to AIDS instead of Tuberculosis. Jon’s good friend, Matt O’Grady, had HIV and writing RENT  proved one way to make sense of it all.

                                    During the first week before the first preview of RENT Jon felt the first thump. This thump was from an aortic aneurysm that would carry him away. When this occurred Jon passed out in the audience seating. The two cast members who play Mark and Rodger were on a balcony set on the stage. When they saw him fall over they jumped off the balcony, then jumped off the stage and ran to his side. The other cast member back stage had heard the commotion and came rushing out. When Jon awoke, what surprised everyone was that he was laughing. Silently on the inside as well as slightly on the out side. He couldn’t believe that the last song he would hear was about someone dying. Then on the night of January 25^th, 1996 he went to a dress rehearsal the night before RENT’s first preview. When Jon went home to his apartment, he put on some hot water for tea. 10 minuets later, his roommate came home and found him dead on the kitchen floor next to his coat. Doctors said he was dead when he hit the floor. Jonathan was 35 years old.

                                    When Jon was writing RENT he wrote it for a reason. He left a message within the writing and the song. He wanted to make the world aware of AIDS/HIV. Jon had AIDS but it didn’t kill him. However it did kill one of his good friends. There was a second message as well. That no matter if a person is homosexual, a cross dresser, or an AIDS victim, they are still human beings and should be treated as such no matter what.

                        Jonathan wrote a song called “LOVE HEALS” to help with the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education and to help Alison. She was the first heterosexual women to contract AIDS from a one night stand. Jon had taken notes on how he envisioned the song sounding. The cast recorded it and at the finale at the first season something extraordinary happened. After the curtain call had happened and the light had come one, they suddenly turn back down and as the curtain rose everyone saw the cast standing on the stage in their “Season of Love” pose. When the music started the cast sang “Love Heals” loud enough for Jonathan to hear it, and it got more applause than the entire show has ever gotten or ever will get.

The original cast never thought they would get to make the film. Now there are casts world wide……