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Jonathan Larson was an American playwright and composer known for Rent. He had a background in music and theater, and worked on unsuccessful shows before creating Rent. He wanted to make theater accessible to younger audiences and Rent became a huge success after his death, winning a Pulitzer Prize and four Tony Awards.
Jonathan Larson was an American playwright and composer, best known for his musical Rent. He was born in New York in 1960 and died in 1996 at the age of 36. Since his death she has received a Pulitzer Prize and four Tony Awards, all for rent.
Jonathan Larson was involved in both music and theater from an early age, playing a number of instruments and appearing in his school’s theater throughout high school. He went to college to study acting, and that’s when he started composing small pieces. While in college he also came into contact with Stephen Sondheim, who would review pieces of him and help with his recommendations. After college, Jonathan Larson moved into a small loft in lower Manhattan, living in relative squalor with a number of other artistically inclined people, providing much inspiration for what would later become Rent.
Early in his career, Larson created a string of unsuccessful shows, including Sacimmoralinority, which was eventually renamed Saved! — An immoral musical about the moral majority and Pride, based on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. His last piece before Rent finally received the title tick, tick… BOOM!, and although it was not a great success, it was fully produced in 1991 at the Village Gate, giving Jonathan Larson a certain degree of exposure.
A few years earlier, in the late 1980s, Jonathan Larson had been put in touch with a fellow playwright, Billy Aronson, who was working on an adaptation of La Bohéme. They worked up and down on it, and finally Jonathan Larson asked Aronson if he could work on the project himself, as he wanted to bring much of his life into it, making it a more autobiographical piece. The two came to an agreement and Larson threw himself into work.
In creating Rent, Jonathan Larson has undertaken a monumental feat. He wanted to make theater accessible and relevant to both Generation X and Generation MTV kids by bringing them back to Broadway and offering them an alternative to television and movies. Though he never lived to see how successful it was, Rent is generally credited with making a splash with younger Broadway audiences.
Rent was first staged as a reading in 1993 and played for a short time a year later. For the next two years, Jonathan Larson worked on the play, collaborating with its director to bring it to fruition. In 1996, before the show opened for a major run, Jonathan Larson died of an aortic aneurysm. The following night, Rent opened Off-Broadway to its first audience. From the first night Rent was a huge success, playing to sold-out houses every night, extending its run over and over again, and eventually moved to Broadway.
Jonathan Larson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Rent following his death, one of seven musicals to be awarded the honor. He also received posthumous Tony Awards for Best Original Score, Best Book and Best Musical, as well as numerous other awards, including Drama Desks, Outer Critics Circle Awards and Obie Awards.
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