Quick test: what comes to mind when I throw out the number 525,600? If you didn’t say RENT, please refrain from ever speaking to me again.
On second thought, read this column thoroughly, go watch RENT 25 times in a row, and write me an enthusiastic thank-you note for opening your eyes to the wonders of this beloved Broadway institution.
Two weeks ago, I found myself seated in the back-most row at the Durham Performing Arts Center, reliving every “sick day” of my high school career when I would, inevitably, watch RENT and sob copiously.
RENT has everything: Akitas named Avita; lawyers; strippers; a tragic death and a heart-wrenching near-death, all set to a continuous stream of song. Above all else, though, it’s a musical that aims to humanize the marginalized in society, memorializing the stories of gay, trans and drug-addicted characters.
Celebrating and expressing these stories through art, where the empathetic link between audience and subject is so integral to the work itself, is powerful.
I watched, enthralled, as Angel the drag queen addressed the audience in a pair of towering heels, and I listened to a life-support group explicate the terrifying realities of living with a life-threatening disease. As I relished the stories and successes of RENT’s characters, I couldn’t help but compare the diverse, supportive fictional world crafted in this play to the realities within our own state, where laws like House Bill 2 strip protection from gay and trans men and women.
Whether or not art truly exists outside of the realm of politics, artists have long relied on figural depiction to humanize radical political philosophies.
Consider Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat, in which David commemorates the death of the French Revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, providing a martyred cause for the Revolutionaries.
Examine Diego Rivera’s repeated incorporation of the Revolutionary Trinity — field workers, industrial workers and soldiers — in his famous murals, where his portrayal of everyday Mexicans lent a human presence to the Communist revolution that he so eagerly anticipated.
