What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/945438
8 WHAT'S UP! FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 3, 2018 COVER STORY BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette F or every generation of theater kids, there is the musical. Not "a" musical, "the" musical, the one that defines who they are, what they believe, where they want to go — and the world they hope they can fix when they get there. At the end of the 1960s, it was "Hair." In the 1970s, "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Godspell," and in the 1980s, "Les Miserables." And in the 1990s? "Rent." "[Jonathan] Larson has provided a story line and ambitious breadth of technique miles away from 'Hair,' with its funky, loosely plotted patchwork of countercultural ditties and ballads," Ben Brantley wrote in a glowing New York Times review when "Rent" opened at the New York Theatre Workshop in February of 1996. "But both works, in a way, are generational anthems, not so much of protest, finally, but of youthful exuberance, even (or especially) when the youth in question is imperiled." Indeed, "Rent" was in many ways like nothing that had gone before it — although Lin-Manuel Miranda says it influenced him to create two of the definitive musicals of the 21st century, "In the Heights" and "Hamilton." "…This show directly addresses the idea of being cut off from feelings by fear," Brantley wrote, adding "this is definitely not a problem for Mr. Larson. Indeed, one forgives the show's intermittent lapses into awkwardness or cliche because of its overwhelming emotional sincerity. And when the whole ensemble stands at the edge of the stage, singing fervently about the ways of measuring borrowed time, the heart both breaks and soars." At the heart of "Rent" was the AIDS epidemic that swept across the United States and the world in the 1980s and early 1990s. "Larson's 'Rent' attempts to break the societal barriers that have prevented individuals from fully understanding HIV and those who are affected by it," wrote Eduardo Albornoz for HIV World News on March 27, 2016. "He does so by establishing a diverse range of characters living with HIV, bringing to light the fact that homosexual men are far from being the only ones susceptible to AIDS. These characters include lesbian, gay, transgender, heterosexual, erotic dancers, and drug addicted individuals. They all represent the American culture by portraying a group of misfits amidst a mainstream society that is obsessed with … commercialism and money.