Larson stole it from People in Trouble - a book that a mutual friend of both playwrights definitely remembers Larson talking about while working on RENT, according to a passage in Stagestruck.|a DLC |b eng |c DLC |d BAKER |d BUR |d OCLCQ |d BTCTA |d YDXCP |d COM So how did it end up in RENT? Simple, says Schulman. The detail is found in People in Trouble, and it's based on a real thing Schulman observed that, thanks to advances in HIV medications, were obsolete by the time Larson was writing the book for RENT. (Though RENT is definitely straight, Schulman argues.) The smoking gun, writes Schulman, is that of the community-wide AZT alarms set to people's watches meant to remind people living with HIV to take their meds. She notes the similarities between the Maureen/ Joanne/Mark subplot and the love triangle at the heart of People in Trouble and the climactic art-based protests against slumlords and rising rents found in both, arguing that RENT's more of a La boheme/ People in Trouble chimera than a straight Puccini reimagining. (It's very juicy! I recommend it highly!) In it, the author debunks a lot of the popular mythology surrounding Larson: that he was gay, that he died of an AIDS-related illness, that he lived in the East Village in the '80s when RENT is set - none of which appear to be true. Five bucks says that there were no fewer than four girls - or at least three girls and a gay - in your high school who could've done all eight minutes of 'La Vie Boheme A' from start to finish with different voices for every character with very little prompting.ĭoes she have any evidence? Schulman makes her case in 1998's Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, a nonfiction work of theatrical criticism that examines which stories New York's theater world was telling at the time, how those stories were being told, and who stood to profit off of all of the above. It ran for 12 years and won a bunch of awards, including the Tony for Best Musical. It's about artists, love, and shitty landlords all set in New York City's East Village amidst the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s.

What's RENT? RENT is a 1996 Broadway musical by the late Jonathan Larson loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's La boheme.

Buried towards the bottom of Brooklyn drag legend Charlene Incarnate's recent piece for Out about how 'Angel's Gender Identity Is RENT's Most Enduring Mystery' is a short little aside that reads: 'queer author Sarah Schulman has suggested with compelling evidence that the characters are plagiarized from her 1990 novel, People in Trouble.' Did that line leave you confused? Don't worry.

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