WITH ITS MESSAGE OF LOVE AND HOPE IN THE MIDST OF POVERTY AND DESPAIR, RENT HAS TOUCHED A CHORD WITH THE MILLIONS WHO HAVE SEEN IT ON STAGE AROUND THE WORLD. NATIVE NEW YORKER MAX LEVANT LOOKS FORWARD TO THE MOVIE VERSION.

In 1994, an experimental musical called Rent opened at the New York Theater Workshop. The brainchild of a 33-year-old by the name of Jonathan Larson, it transposed Puccini’s opera, La Bohème, to the Lower East Side, recreating the student bohemian world of 19th-century Paris among a group of people struggling to find success, security and love in the East Village against a backdrop of poverty, frustration and AIDS.