Theatergoer Walked Out of 'Rent' Bee the 'Show Was About Gays'

Contents:

• GAY INOGRAPHY: IT’S TIME TO PAY ‘RENT’ PRAISE
• THEATERGOER WALKED OUT OF 'RENT' BEE THE 'SHOW WAS ABOUT GAYS'

GAY INOGRAPHY: IT’S TIME TO PAY ‘RENT’ PRAISE

“Bisexuals, Trisexuals, Homo Sapiens”.

There’s no qutn that when Rent opened on Broadway April 1996—wh a pair of gay love stori, a narrative that put the AIDS crisis at s heart, and one of Broadway’s first openly queer romantic duets— was a tone of queer reprentatn.

Of the, two (Joanne and Mimi) are cis women, and another (Angel) uld be read ( morn parlance) as eher a trans woman or a genrfluid/femme-prentg gay man. That two of the romantic subplots (between Angel and Colls and Joanne and Mreen) are queer—and queered, given that Larson drew on Pucci’s La Bohème as source material—is stris ahead of the more faiar “token gay iend” narrative more faiar across theater, film, and televisn still today. * In this, Colls is particularly signifint: He is Mark and Roger’s bt iend and a gay man livg wh HIV, but he is also much more than that: a profsor of philosophy (formerly of MIT, later NYU) as well as a self-scribed anarchist.

THEATERGOER WALKED OUT OF 'RENT' BEE THE 'SHOW WAS ABOUT GAYS'

Mimi close, but miraculoly revers, and so, Rent do at first glance seem to be fallg to the “bury your gays” trope. The characters reflect a iend group of filmmakers, micians, actors and anarchists of all kds of sexuali and genr exprsns, cludg gay, lbian, bi and drag queens. Schulman (who also alleg Larson ripped off her novel People In Trouble for RENT) told Slate 2005: “The larger issue has to do wh the reprentatn of AIDS, gay people, and urban gentrifitn.

The leavg theatergoer told a staff member they were leavg bee "I didn't realise this show was about gays. A theatergoer left a productn of "Rent" on Saturday, tellg the ont of hoe they did not realize the show was "about gays.

A 2005 film versn further popularized the show, but Fox's live productn of Rent, which aired last night, will surely troduce an entirely new generatn to a story which AIDS is a major plot vice and duets between quarrelg queer lovers appear to be her book Stagtck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketg of Gay Ameri, prolific playwright, novelist, and activist Sarah Schulman tailed her experience livg, wrg, and eventually watchg what me to be known as the highly-ld Broadway mil. The woman was an artist, but also que homophobic, both ternally and externally. "My fantasy was that by exposg her to the reali of the AIDS crisis, she would drop her blrs about the functns of homophobia and simultaneoly velop an unrstandg of the value of artwork rooted experience, " Schulman wr didn't work out for Schulman and her lover, but the story and s circumstanc did spire People Trouble.