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Feature Story | 11/25/2009 |
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East Village people
Experimental Theater at Vassar to revive Rent, opening this Wednesday with free shows |
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| | Photo of members of Rent cast, directed by Christopher Grabowski, Vassar professor of drama, by Kelley Van Dilla | |
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by Paul Smart
Need a break from all the flying sleighs and tra-la-la-ing cherubs that mark the onslaught of the fast-approaching holiday season - but still need to be humming a good song and entertaining family members? Rent, one of the brightest stars of the musical firmament of recent years, is getting a full-court-press treatment at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie this December 2, 3, 4 and 5, in what's being touted as one of the first-ever college productions of the acclaimed musical.
The Pulitzer- and two-time Tony-Award-winning work, also made into a best-selling film, is based on the plot of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's La Boh?me, about struggling artists in a harsh world that no longer champions creativity, with a brand-new rock score that draws from the disco and New Wave elements of the early 1990s in which Rent is set. With script, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, the play gives voice - in energetic, audience-involving, break-down-the-fourth-wall fashion - to a group of young artists in the East Village who are struggling to be heard. It also touches upon issues of race, class and sexual orientation, as well as the advent of the AIDS virus, in its narrative course.
The key factor in Vassar's new production of this Off-Broadway and Broadway classic is that college Drama professor Chris Grabowski, who has designed and directed the work for and in Vassar's respected Experimental Theater, also directed the first staged reading of Rent during its early days in development at the New York Theater Workshop in the 1990s. The Experimental Theater was founded at the college in 1926 in honor of pioneering stage director Hallie Flanagan.
Rent will be presented by the Experimental Theater of the Drama Department at Vassar College on December 2, 3, 4, and 5 at 8 p.m. each evening in the Martel Theater in the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film. The performances are free, but seating is very limited and advance reservations are required. For information and reservations, call the box office at (845) 437-5599 or visit http://drama.vassar.edu.
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