Live telecast gives new platform to ‘Rent’
The trend toward real-time broadcasts of popular musicals leads inevitably to Fox’s “Rent Live,” set to broadcast at 8 p.m. Sunday.
By any accounting of popularity, it had to be.
“Rent,” on Broadway from April 1996 to September 2008, had more than 5,100 performances. It has had three national tours and a 2005 movie. Its influence as a poprock musical — loosely based on “La Boheme” and telling a modern tale of young people living with and dying from AIDS — is immeasurable. The diverse characters who are junkies and hip artists, in straight, gay and biracial relationships, struck a nerve. And the late writer and creator Jonathan Larson added another touch that gave “Rent” a universal spin: loving, concerned parents.
It’s a show that was a major influence for “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and one that has spawned the inevitable parodies, along with an army of fans called Rentheads.
Although the musical rarely has been out of circulation for theatergoers, a television audience can be counted in the millions. The opportunity to engage a potential new generation of Rentheads is not lost on Tom Viola, a Bethel Park native and the longtime executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
The organization is in its 30th year, and when “Rent” first came along to tell a story that had both heterosexual and homosexual couples with AIDS, it was an eyeopener for the type of work Broadway Cares was doing.
“The Broadway company ran for about 10 years, and during that time they were extraordinary,” Mr. Viola said by phone last week. “Not only the original cast, but the hundreds of folks who worked with those shows were engaged with us in fundraising and advocacy work that we do.”
The actors became energized “telling that particular story eight times a week — not only around the message of HIV and AIDS, which plays such a pivotal role in the story, but also in terms of what it means to be part of a marginalized community. What it is to be living on the edge. What it is to live with intense aspirations and with the knowledge what you most wish for might not happen because of circumstances you cannot control.”
The AIDS epidemic that existed in the United States in the 1980s and inspired both the creation of BC/EFA and “Rent” is not the
crisis it once was. That doesn’t mean that HIV-AIDS has gone away, or that a story such as “Rent’s” has grown stale.
Mr. Viola pointed out that the productions from high schools to professionals “continue to engage with us in fundraising, social justice and outreach endeavors. I think that message when seen on television at the end of the month, this production, will now carry that message to millions, about not closing the door, about reaching back and helping to pull people along with you.”
It’s a message that Mr. Viola has advocated for 30 years. He grew up in Bethel Park, until his family left for Zelienople after his sophomore year. He stays connected through Facebook. While speaking from the Broadway Cares offices in New York City, he recalled fondly his introduction to the arts through the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Tam O’Shanter children’s program, in which he represented St. Thomas More Church.
After many years in New York, “What I discovered is, anyone you meet up here from Pittsburgh, who is involved in any kind of creative activity, not just theater but copywriter, fashion, design, I swear to God they were part of those Tam O’Shanter classes!”
He continues to engage with Pittsburgh not just through family and friends but also through the work that began for him as an actor in New York and led to him being honored with the 2010 Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre.
Before 1992, Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS were separate entities working together toward common goals. Mr. Viola had worked closely with actress Colleen Dewhurst, who led the Actors Equity charge against the disease devastating the Broadway community. In 1992, it was Mr. Viola who oversaw the merger of the groups into the single nonprofit it is today.
Since 1988, Broadway Cares has awarded $96 million nationwide to community groups. Last year, BC/EFA helped to fund six Pittsburgharea agencies, including $17,500 to Allies for Health + Wellbeing, the former Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force, that is “one of our longest ongoing grantees,” Mr. Viola said. Grants in Pennsylvania totaled $240,000 and reached agencies “from Philadelphia to Clarion, Harrisburg to New Hope and places in between.”
Broadway Cares has long been associated with The Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative, an arm of The Actors Fund that helps women dealing with serious medical conditions. And there is no end to its commitment to help those who have HIV-AIDS.
“It’s not going away; it’s only changed,” Mr. Viola explained. “The story that Angel goes through in ‘Rent,’ that he ultimately dies, is not necessarily what is happening today — unless you live in a community that has no access to services . ... To think that AIDS is over just because it is manageable for most — that ‘for most’ is important because it is not ‘all’ — is a great mistake.”
He pointed out that the disease is still stigmatized in many communities, where people don’t speak about it or check their health statuses out of fear. “And it’s the not talking about it and not encouraging an accurate and compassionate conversation that actually keeps the virus active.”
For Mr. Viola and his organization, that is perhaps the main benefit of having “Rent” replayed in front of a live television audience. The Fox show comes with some attractions beyond the music and story. The young cast includes Brandon Victor Dixon and Jordan Fisher, alumni of “Hamilton” on Broadway, and Vanessa Hudgens (“High School Musical,” Netflix’s “The Princess Switch”).
“It’s keeping the message alive,” he said of the story of “Rent,” about the love and support that can make a difference for those struggling with disease.
It’s a message that can save lives.