Rent

a rock opera

The musical Rent had its premiere in 1996 on Broadway, where it met with phenomenal success. Aside from several Tony Awards, it was also one of the few musical theatre works to win a prestigious Pulitzer Prize. It was one of the longest running Broadway shows ever, has been performed across the world several times and was also made into a film in 2005. The work, whose message is that despite great power and determination, we are still only mortal people, gained an iconic cult partly due to the fact that its author, Jonathan Larson, died shortly before the long-awaited premiere and thus never received the appreciation he deserved for his many years of work.

The touching, raw and often also cruel story takes place in the 1990s in East Village, an “alternative” part of Manhattan, New York, during a culminating AIDS epidemic. It concerns a group of people who, mostly through no fault of their own, find themselves standing on the edge of society. This eclectic mix of Bohemians, fledgling artists, prostitutes, homosexuals, homeless people and drug addicts spend their lives just trying to get by, and despite all the obstacles which are in their way, manage to find enviable strength and lust for life within themselves. Even though the musical concerns unhappy events from the lives of members of a very specific social grouping, it offers a gripping view of our human existence in which, after all, the most important things are love, desire and belief in the future, despite all difficulties. This charming and unforgettable piece, which is now a classic of musical theatre and which was based on motifs from Puccini´s opera La bohème is directed by Stanislav Moša.