Bohème Project: Rent

Cast

Coming Soon …

Creative

James Lowe
Conductor

Tomer Zvulun
Co-Director

Vita Tzykun
Co-Director

Vita Tzykun
Set & Projection Designer

Amy Sutton
Costume Designer

Lindsey Ewing
Wig & Makeup Designer

Ricardo Aponte
Associate Director / Choreographer

Nora Winsler
Assistant Director

Michael Lewis
Assistant Scenic Designer

Rent
Composer & Lyricist/Librettist: Jonathan Larson
Additional Lyrics: Billy Aronson
Based on La bohème: Giacomo Puccini
Premiere Performance: January 25, 1996—New York Theatre Workshop
Broadway Premiere: April 29, 1996—Nederlander Theatre, New York

Loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s beloved opera La bohème, Rent is the story of one year in  the lives of poor, defiant, young artists as they find their creative voices and learn to love. Set in New York City’s East Village, Rent  reflects the agony of the 80s, a time shattered by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “Light My Candle,” “Goodbye Love,” and “Take Me or Leave Me,” broke new ground on Broadway with music that resonates even today.

Performed in English with English Supertitles

Pullman Yards

Performance runtime: approximately 3 hours
Act I:
70 minutes  |  Intermission: 25 minutes  |  Act II: 85 minutes

RENT is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com

Rent
Composer & Lyricist/Librettist: Jonathan Larson
Additional Lyrics: Billy Aronson
Based on La bohème: Giacomo Puccini
Premiere Performance: January 25, 1996—New York Theatre Workshop
Broadway Premiere: April 29, 1996—Nederlander Theatre, New York

Loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s beloved opera La bohème, Rent is the story of one year in  the lives of poor, defiant, young artists as they find their creative voices and learn to love. Set in New York City’s East Village, Rent  reflects the agony of the 80s, a time shattered by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “Light My Candle,” “Goodbye Love,” and “Take Me or Leave Me,” broke new ground on Broadway with music that resonates even today.

Performed in English with English Supertitles

Pullman Yards

Performance runtime: approximately 3 hours
Act I:
70 minutes  |  Intermission: 25 minutes  |  Act II: 85 minutes

RENT is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com

Cast

Coming Soon …

Creative

James Lowe
Conductor

Tomer Zvulun
Co-Director

Vita Tzykun
Co-Director

Vita Tzykun
Set & Projection Designer

Amy Sutton
Costume Designer

Lindsey Ewing
Wig & Makeup Designer

Ricardo Aponte
Associate Director / Choreographer

Nora Winsler
Assistant Director

Michael Lewis
Assistant Scenic Designer

Synopsis

Rent chronicles a year in the life of a group of friends living in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of New York City circa 1996. On Christmas Eve, we meet Mark, a filmmaker and his roommate Roger, a former musician, living in an apartment owned by their former friend Benny. Now married into an uppercrust family, Benny has turned off the heat in the building in an attempt to force the tenants to either pay their past due rent or vacate. In a nearby lot, Mark’s ex-girlfriend, Maureen, has planned a protest performance with her girlfriend Joanne, to block Benny from evicting the houseless encampment there to build his “Cyberstudio.” He tells the boys if they can convince her to cancel the protests, he will erase their debts and allow them to live there for free.

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Another tenant in the same building is Mimi, a young dancer, who begins to flirt with Roger. He shuts her out, unable to tell her that he is a recovering drug user who is HIV positive and grieving the death of his ex-girlfriend.

Tom Collins, a friend of Mark and Roger, comes to visit after being expelled from M.I.T., but before he can reach the apartment, he is robbed and found by a street musician named Angel, who is HIV positive. They join the group and go to Maureen’s protest, which ends in a riot by the police.

Afterwards, everyone meets at the Life Cafe to celebrate the protest. Around this time, Roger sees Mimi taking the AIDS medication (AZT) and realizes that they have this condition in common. With this knowledge, Roger and Mimi become closer and become a couple. Maureen and her girlfriend, Joanne, decide to break up, and Benny padlocks the apartment to keep Roger and Mark from re-entering.

On New Year’s Eve, the crew break into their padlocked apartment and Mark finds a voicemail from a tabloid news outlet, offering to pay him for his footage of the riot. Suddenly, Benny arrives saying that Mimi (through sexual wiles) has convinced him to erase their debts and allow them to live rent free. Mimi denies his allegations and though she and Roger make amends, she finds comfort in her old drug habits.

By Valentine’s Day, the couples in the group have been living together — Roger and Mimi, Collins and Angel, and Maureen and Joanne. However, Roger’s jealousy begins to grow due to Mimi’s habits, causing them to break up. Joanne and Maureen, who are constantly bickering, also split up again. Meanwhile, Angel’s AIDS condition worsens and several months later they pass away. Shaken by the loss, Mark and Roger’s crew falls apart. Mark “sells out” and takes the tabloid job, Roger leaves town, and Joanne and Maureen attempt to rekindle their relationship.

As time passes, each member of the group is in turmoil but tries to reconcile their differences. Roger returns to live with Mark who quits his job and finishes the film he’s been working on. Roger finally finishes the “one great song” he has been working on. Mimi has been missing; Maureen and Joanne find her unresponsive on the street from a drug overdose. Faced with the possibility of losing her forever, Roger sings a song especially for her, which miraculously revives her. Mimi says that, in her unconscious state, it was the spirit of Angel who somehow helped guide her back to life. The group then watches Mark’s film — which celebrates the last year of their life together and honors the life of Angel.

Courtesy of Portland Center Stage


Sponsored by the Molly Blank Fund of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation

The Discoveries series

The Discoveries series is dedicated to audience members who are seeking new works, new ideas and fresh perspectives. These are not your standard operas.

Locations

As part of The Opera’s effort to bring opera to new audiences all over Atlanta, these productions are performed in exciting alternative venues that we don’t traditionally perform opera in.

Supertitles

Many operas are in a foreign language. Supertitles are similar to subtitles in a film, except they are projected above the stage. These translations will help you follow what’s happening on stage.

What to Wear

There is no dress code at The Opera and you will see everything from jeans to evening gowns and formal suits. Most people use it as a chance to enjoy dressing up in their own style.

Arriving in Good Time

If you are late, you will have to sit the first act in the back and then in the intermission ushers will show you to your seat. Plan ahead to arrive with extra time.

About to Discoveries series venues

Enhance Your Visit

Backstory

Discoveries series performances include events either before or after the performance. As part of the Backstory program, these experiences allow audience members to learn more about the opera, open a conversation around important topics, and participate with the cast in conversation, dancing, and many other formats. Free for ticket holders.

Familiarizing Yourself with the Story

Because of the foreign languages, classical music, and often complex plots, you will very likely enjoy the performance better if you spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with the story and characters in advance. Some people even like to listen to the music in advance and others prefer to let it wash over them during the show and perhaps look it up afterwards.

Composer

Jonathan Larson
(1960-1996)

Jonathan David Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996) was an American composer, lyricist and playwright most famous for writing the musicals Rent and Tick, Tick… Boom!, which explored the social issues of multiculturalism, substance use disorder, and homophobia. He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Rent.

Larson was born in Mt. Vernon, New York to Nanette and Allan Larson of White Plains, New York, on February 4, 1960. His family was Jewish. His grandfather, Bernard Isaac Lazarson, who was born in Russia, changed the family surname from Lazarson. At an early age, Larson played the trumpet and tuba, sang in his school’s choir, and took piano lessons. His early musical influences and his favorite rock musicians included Elton John, The Doors, The Who, and Billy Joel, as well as the classic composers of musical theatre, especially Stephen Sondheim. He also loved Pete Townshend, The Police, Prince, Liz Phair, and The Beatles.Larson attended White Plains High School, where he was also involved in acting, performing in lead roles in various productions, graduating in 1978. He had a sister, Julie.

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Larson attended Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, with a four-year scholarship as an acting major, in addition to performing in numerous plays and musical theatre, graduating in 1982 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Larson stopped acting to focus on compositions. During his college years, he began music composition, composing music first for small student productions, called cabarets, and later the score to a musical entitled The Book of Good Love, written by the department head, Jacques Burdick, who was also Larson’s college mentor.

As a student at Adelphi University, Larson co-wrote Sacrimmoralinority, a Brechtian-themed cabaret musical and his first musical, with David Glenn Armstrong. It was first staged at Adelphi University in the winter of 1981. After Larson and Armstrong graduated in 1982, they renamed it Saved! – An Immoral Musical on the Moral Majority. It played a four-week showcase run at Rusty’s Storefront Blitz, a small theatre on 42nd Street in New York, Manhattan, and won both authors a writing award from ASCAP.

After graduating, Larson participated in a summer stock theatre program at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Michigan, as a piano player, which resulted in his earning an Equity card for membership in the Actors’ Equity Association.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Conductor

James Lowe

Grammy nominated conductor, arranger, orchestrator and composer James Lowe continues to garner praise for “beautifully sculpted” (Opera News) performances. He appears regularly with major opera houses in the US and abroad, as well as on Broadway. He will conduct the upcoming world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis with New York City Opera at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and will lead Arizona Opera’s production of El Milagro del Recuerdo. This past summer he arranged, orchestrated and conducted Songbird, a new adaptation of Offenbach’s La Périchole in the style of 1920’s New Orleans jazz for the Glimmerglass Festival. In recent seasons he has appeared at Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse and Opéra National de Bordeaux. 

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Mr. Lowe has had a long relationship with Houston Grand Opera, where he has led La bohéme, Carmen, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Sweeney Todd, Jake Heggie’s The End of the Affair (world premiere production), as well as the HGO Studio production of Copland’s The Tender Land. At HGO he also conducted the world premiere production of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince. He led Jonathan Dove’s Flight at the Pittsburgh Opera Center, as well as Mark Adamo’s Little Women at Lyric Opera Cleveland in a production directed by the composer. He conducts regularly at Utah Opera, and has appeared with the Houston Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Wolf Trap Opera, and the American Composers Orchestra, as well as The Nutcracker with the Houston Ballet. 

On Broadway, James Lowe was the Music Director and Conductor of the recent revival of Les Misérables, as well as the Tony Award-winning revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, starring Sutton Foster and Joel Grey. He also served as the Music Supervisor for the First National Tour of this production. Mr. Lowe made his Broadway debut conducting performances of Gypsy, starring Patti LuPone. 

Mr. Lowe was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on the Anything Goes cast album released on Ghostlight Records, which he conducted and co-produced. With members of the cast he has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, the CBS Early Show and A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. He toured North America as Music Director and Conductor of the acclaimed Cameron Mackintosh/National Theatre production of My Fair Lady, and conducted the First National Tour of Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza. He served as US Music Supervisor of the recent North American Tour of The Phantom of the Opera. 

Mr. Lowe has appeared in concert with Sir Elton John, conducting his own orchestrations and choral arrangements of Elton’s classic songs, as well as with singer-songwriter Randy Newman and the legendary Booker T. Jones. His arrangements have been performed by Joyce DiDonato (Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall), Isabel Leonard, Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra (Metropolitan Opera’s “Three Divas at Versailles” concert), Glimmerglass Festival and Utah Opera, among others. His opera, Poppea, a new work based on themes of Monteverdi reimagined with electric guitars and industrial electronics will premiere at Fort Worth Opera in 2021 (postponed due to covid). 

As Associate Conductor at Houston Grand Opera for several seasons he served as cover conductor, principal pianist and coach on many productions, including the world premiere of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata. Mr. Lowe assisted on the world premieres of Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree and Tod Machover’s Resurrection, playing keyboards on the recordings of those operas. He can also be heard as keyboardist on HGO’s popular recording of Adamo’s Little Women. He has been on the music staff of New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Virginia Opera and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and served as Resident Conductor and Chorus Master at the Ash Lawn Opera Festival. He has been the Music Director of the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas, and he appeared onstage as the Tavern Pianist in Santa Fe Opera’s 2001 production of Wozzeck. 

Mr. Lowe has played in several rock, jazz, blues and country bands. He was the keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Backwash for five years, recording and touring the Eastern United States. He co-produced the band’s compact disc, Goin’ to the Mall, released in 1995 on Transit Records. 

As a pianist, Mr. Lowe performed as soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and has given recitals, including several world premieres, at such venues as the Aspen Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institute, the University of Texas San Antonio New Music Festival, and the University of Colorado Artsweek Festival in Boulder. He taught Keyboard Literature and piano at Syracuse University, and he served on the piano and musical theater faculty at the Hochstein Music School in Rochester. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, with additional studies at the Aspen Music School and the Aspen Opera Theater Center. 

Co-Directors

Tomer Zvulun

General and Artistic Director of The Atlanta Opera since 2013, Israeli born Tomer Zvulun is also one of opera’s most exciting stage directors, earning consistent praise for his creative vision, often described as cinematic and fresh.  His work has been presented by prestigious opera houses around the world, including The Metropolitan Opera, the opera companies of Israel, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Montreal, Wexford, Glimmerglass, Houston, Washington National Opera, Seattle, Dallas, Detroit, San Diego, Minnesota, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Wolf Trap, as well as leading educational institutes and universities such as The Juilliard School, Indiana University, Boston University, and IVAI in Tel Aviv.   

Since taking the leadership in Atlanta a decade ago, he personally directed thirty of the company’s productions. He increased the operations of the company from three to six productions per season, while stabilizing the financials and in the course of his first decade tenure, secured Atlanta’s position as one of the top 10 opera companies in the US. Some of his noted achievements includes launching the successful Discoveries series, creating the first young artist program in the company’s history, tripling the company’s annual fund raising, launching the company’s first RING cycle, creating The Atlanta Opera Film Studio, and building a theatre in a circus tent where performances were conducted safely during the pandemic. 

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His work at The Atlanta Opera attracted international attention by earning numerous awards and prizes including the nomination of The Atlanta Opera for the International Opera Awards in London and the selection of his production of Silent Night as both the Irish Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution production of the year. His focus on innovation led to an invitation to deliver a TED talk as well as a case study that is being taught at Harvard Business School. His productions travel the world and bring wide exposure to the company. Next season his productions of  Rigoletto travel to Los Angeles Opera, his La bohème returns to The Dallas Opera, and his acclaimed production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs will make its Kennedy Center debut at the Washington National Opera.  

Headshot_Tomer2022

Vita Tzykun

Ukrainian-Israeli-American designer, director, and visual artist, Vita Tzykun has designed and directed productions for companies worldwide, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Bolshoi Theatre, Norwegian Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. A proponent of new works, she has designed over a dozen world premieres to date. Film and tv credits include art direction for Lady Gaga, and production design for several award-winning films, music videos, and nationally-aired tv ads.

Vita’s interdisciplinary art collective, GLMMR, presents stage and multimedia works throughout the world, and was recently awarded the Granada Artist Residency at University of California, Davis, where she and performer/media artist David Adam Moore created a new large-scale immersive theater installation, REFUGE, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Known widely for her work in education and leadership, Tzykun serves on the faculty of the National Theater Institute and has lectured at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Mannes School of Music, and Carnegie Hall’s Weil Institute. Advisory roles include the National Endowment for the Arts, and tech-focused panels for San Diego Opera and Austin Opera.

Tzykun has been featured in Lighting and Sound America magazine, given a solo exhibition at Opera America, and nominated for Designer of the Year by the International Opera Awards.

Her paintings have been exhibited at the Ceres Gallery in NYC and are held in private collections throughout the US, Europe, and Israel.