Based on Michael Riedel’s spectacular book Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway, the Rent miniseries explores the creation of the landmark musical with those who were there. Rent marks a major turning point in the history of American musical theatre... Read More
From the show: Singular Sensation: The Podcast
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Based on Michael Riedel’s spectacular book Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway, the Rent miniseries explores the creation of the landmark musical with those who were there. Rent marks a major turning point in the history of American musical theatre. Before Rent, the British spectacles dominated - Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Sunset Boulevard. When Rent, composed and written by Jonathan Larson, exploded onto the scene, the show ignited huge excitement from a young audience and changed the entire trajectory of the art form forever.
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.
[0:12] Michael Riedel: Rent, a musical no one had ever heard of before.
[0:15] Michael Riedel: And Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent, turned Broadway into something that young people wanted to go see again.
[0:22] Michael Riedel: What is interesting about Jonathan and the creation of Rent is that he wrote about these people who lived on the Lower East Side struggling as artists and some of them were drug addicts.
[0:32] Michael Riedel: He also was a Broadway guy and he envisioned Mimi as somebody who would be played by a Broadway person.
[0:39] Michael Riedel: And then Daphne Rubin-Vega shows up unannounced at the auditions, and she is a true denizen of the Lower East Side.
[0:49] Michael Riedel: She is not a Broadway person whatsoever.
[0:52] Michael Riedel: She is a club kid back in the day.
[0:55] Michael Riedel: And she goes in and she auditions for Rent and she scares the hell out of Jonathan Larson, and he does not know what to do with her.
[1:03] Michael Riedel: He actually asked me to sing a song and it had that there.
[1:08] Michael Riedel: And I was kind of thinking, like, oh my god, it's sort of like the hoo, like Bobbo Babbo Rightly.
[1:14] Michael Riedel: Big there, there, there.
[1:16] Michael Riedel: Same ver, same chords, but inverted.
[1:19] Michael Riedel: Uh no, no, no, no, no.
[1:19] Michael Riedel: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[1:25] Michael Riedel: You know, I was like just like a puppy champion at the bit.
[1:29] Michael Riedel: Yeah, going for like the final callback, going up the stairs, like wearing some vinyl pants.
[1:35] Michael Riedel: And so I sang the song and I went down the stairs and I walked down the street and I heard my name and I turned around and it was Jim Nicola who walked down the street and he said, Lo, welcome.
[1:47] Michael Riedel: You got the part.
[1:49] Michael Riedel: I knew that this was like I won the lottery.
[1:52] Michael Riedel: So I hope you will join me on the podcast, Singular Sensation, right here on the Broadway Podcast Network, and wherever podcasts are heard.
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