by Anthony Rapp
He’d also called me soon after I’d gotten home from Twister. “I got invited to present a couple of songs from Rent as a part of this evening of presentations by local opera companies,” he said.
“That sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll be the only rock opera.”
I smiled. “Probably.”
“And there will also be a lot of people there who really know La Bohème inside and out. It’ll be fun.”
“Cool.”
“Now I know you’re playing Mark and everything, but would you be willing to sing a couple of Roger’s songs for it? We haven’t found a Roger yet, and I didn’t want to get any of my friends’ hopes up, you know, by asking them.”
“Yeah, sure, of course I’ll do it.” Again, Jonathan had flattered me. I felt that he was beginning to consider me a true member of his ensemble, an important collaborator. I had heard of composers working with actors in this way, but had never experienced anything like it.
I skated over to his apartment on the West Side, waited on the sidewalk outside his building for him to toss down his keys (he had no buzzer that let people in), and then climbed the five flights up to his railroad flat. I’d been there once before, during the studio production, and I was struck once again by the charming but decrepit environment in which he lived: the bathtub sat in the kitchen, the walls were painted various colors that didn’t match, and the furniture was makeshift and threadbare. His workstation, however, seemed very well appointed and organized, situated in the corner of the living room in front of his big windows: computers and keyboards and speakers surrounded him, while framed posters and programs and awards climbed up the walls on either side.
We worked up the songs (“Light My Candle” and “Another Day,” the latter a tad high for me, but manageable), and the next night I met him down in SoHo for our little performance. We sat through some mild-mannered art songs and excerpts from new folk operas, and then it was our turn. I had no idea what this crowd was going to make of our noisier version of opera music. But before I could find out, Jonathan got up in front of the small audience and spoke, his head tilted to one side like a puppy, his hands animated, his voice mellow and clear.
“I’ve always loved La Bohème and Puccini’s other work, and I’ve also always loved Billy Joel and Elton John and the Who, and I’ve also always loved Stephen Sondheim and the medium of musical theatre. And I wanted to write something that could incorporate all of those influences.
“Well, a few years ago, several of my friends came to me and told me that they were HIV-positive. And then a couple of them died. And as I was coming to terms with this, I realized I had to write something in response. And so I began to work on Rent.
“La Bohème was the perfect starting point. Instead of Puccini’s artists’ garret in Paris, I placed my characters in a loft in the East Village. Instead of consumption, my characters became infected with AIDS. Rodolfo, the poet, became Roger, the lead singer of a failed rock band called the Well Hungarians.” Jonathan smiled as the audience laughed. “Marcello, the painter, became Mark, the documentary filmmaker. And Puccini’s Mimi became my Mimi Marquez, a heroin-addicted S&M dancer.” More laughter.
“I’m very honored to be asked to be a part of tonight’s presentation,” he continued. “I dedicate this work to my friends that I’ve lost. Thank you.”
There was a smattering of applause, and we began. I had never heard Jonathan speak at such length about the origins of his show, and as I sang, the power of his words resonated through me.
I invited Jonathan to my birthday party at the end of October, and I was happy that he showed up and stayed a long time, socializing and drinking and laughing. I didn’t get to talk to him much that night, but after he left, my friend Kevin came up to me and said, “Who was that guy?”
“Who, Jonathan?”
“Yeah. What’s with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we were talking, right? And I asked him what he did for a living, and he said to me, with a perfectly straight face, he said, ‘I’m the future of musical theatre.’”
I guffawed. “Really?”
“Yeah, dude. Totally. I mean, what is that about?”
I chuckled some more. It was a crazy, bold, wild thing to say. “Well, maybe he’s right,” I said.
Kevin took a swig of his beer. “Yeah, but still. Would anyone want to admit that? I mean, come on.”
On December 18th, the night before rehearsals began, Jonathan hosted what he called a “Peasant’s Feast,” a potluck dinner for the cast and crew, at his apartment. I put together a salad and headed west, running a little late as usual. When I got there, the apartment was bustling with people, although the only ones I knew were Jonathan; our director, Michael Greif; our artistic director, Jim Nicola; and Daphne Rubin-Vega, who was going to be reprising her role of Mimi. I said my hellos, giving Daphne a huge hug, and then Jonathan pulled me aside.
“I want you to meet the guy playing Roger. His name’s Adam Pascal. We’re really excited about him. He’s never done anything on stage before, but he’s got an amazing voice. He can really sing.”
“Great,” I said, and Jonathan took me to him. Never done anything? Not anything? This should be interesting, I thought.
“Adam,” Jonathan said, “this is Anthony. Anthony, Adam.”
“Hey, nice to meet you,” Adam said, and grabbed and shook my hand vigorously.
“You, too,” I said. If Jonathan hadn’t told me that this guy was playing Roger, I never would have predicted it. His disposition was too outgoing and friendly, and the combination of his dyed blonde hair, in a caesar cut; his close-cropped, dirty-blond beard; and his outfit—a forest green sweatshirt with a medieval-style lace-up collar, underneath denim overalls—made him seem to me more like one of Robin Hood’s Merrie Men than an ex-junkie wannabe rock star. But I trusted Jonathan; I knew how long they’d sought a good Roger. I looked forward to hearing him sing.
When it was time for dinner, we took our seats in mismatched chairs along two long tables that had been set up, and Jonathan rose, clinking his glass so he could make a toast. His head was tilted like it had been at the opera event, but his voice was much softer and his body much more still as he spoke.
“I invited you all here because every year at Christmastime, I have what I call a Peasants’ Feast. Since a lot of my friends and I don’t have very much money, it’s hard for some of us to go home and be with our families at the holidays. So we began this tradition of feeding each other and bringing each other a little holiday cheer.
“Well,” he continued, “this year, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, because the show was about to go into rehearsals, and I wanted to do something to mark that occasion, but I also didn’t want to break tradition and not have a Peasants’ Feast.”
He paused, took a deep breath, and then continued, his voice beginning to waver. “I am so grateful to the New York Theatre Workshop, and to all of you who are a part of this show. This is one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me, getting this production together. It’s been a very long time coming.” He paused again. “I wrote this show about my life. About the lives of my friends. And some of my friends are gone. And I really miss them.” He paused again and wiped tears off his cheeks. “I guess I just wanted to say that you all are going to bring my friends to life, and I wanted to thank you for that. I wanted to thank you all for being my new friends.”
The next morning, I rolled out of bed and walked through the snow and the cold to East Fourth Street, happy that our first day of rehearsal had finally come. The cast and crew milled about the skylit, airy rehearsal room, munching on doughnuts and slurping coffee and murmuring conversations with one another. On one wall, a collage had been put up featuring articles about grunge rock and Nirvana, pictures of the East Village sculpture gardens, and a makeshift placard that declared in a scrawl, STOP ARRESTING ARTISTS. Michael Greif was standing alone in front of the collage, a
nd I wandered up to him, a little bit nervous about talking to him, but emboldened by my excitement for the work we were about to do.
“I didn’t get a chance to say this last night, but I’m really happy that I’m getting to do this show again. Thanks for bringing me back.”
Michael smiled politely. “Well, I’m happy to have you back.”
“I’ve been so looking forward to it.”
“Yes, well, hopefully we’ll be able to make the show even better than it was last year. We’ll see how we do.” I didn’t say anything more, but it seemed that I was a bit more confident about our show’s prospects than Michael was. It would be interesting to see if his caution would prove to be well-founded.
Only three of us from the studio production were returning: myself, Daphne, and Gilles Chiasson, an ensemble member with an exceptionally strong, beautifully piercing tenor voice. I sat next to Daphne throughout the first days of rehearsal, intoxicated by the giddiness of being in on a big secret that the rest of the cast was only beginning to learn. When we began the first day’s rehearsal by singing through “Seasons of Love,” just as we had a year before, I felt a powerful rush as our fifteen voices blended together, with our same musical director, Tim Weil, guiding us expertly through the song’s syncopations and harmonies. The sound and feel of this cast was already stronger and tighter than the previous year’s, and we made fast and vigorous progress through our rehearsals.
I started to bring my camera to some rehearsals, snapping pictures when I could, which wasn’t as often as I’d like because I was onstage so much. A small price to pay for being one of the leads. One day, I sat on the floor clicking away while Michael worked with Adam on the staging of “One Song Glory.” Jonathan had not been remotely hyperbolic when he’d told me that Adam could sing; the boy could really sing. His rich, throaty, raspy, rock and roll voice exploded out of him with a force and passion that completely belied his affable, somewhat naïve demeanor. And even though he had no previous acting experience, he sang from a very instinctual, deeply rooted, emotionally expressive place.
While Adam sang through the song, Michael leaned down to where I hunkered with my camera underneath his table and whispered, “Isn’t he fantastic?” I nodded vehemently in agreement and snapped some more pictures.
Jonathan also leaned down to me at one point, a gleam in his eye, while Michael talked privately with Adam. “It’s perfect that you’re taking these pictures,” he said. “You’re like Mark with his camera. It’s great.”
That hadn’t been my goal; I’d wanted to document the rehearsal process for my own sake, rather than as research for my character, but I was happy that once again I’d done something of which Jonathan approved.
Jonathan had made extensive changes to the text of the show since the studio production, cutting out several songs, writing new ones in their place, and rewriting lyrics to already existing songs. The embittered, self-abusive rants in the title number had been transformed into a series of urgent, driving questions that expressed the themes of the show, such as “How do you document real life / when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?” and “How do you leave the past behind / when it keeps finding ways / to get to your heart?” All the revisions felt like giant steps forward.
One of the biggest transformations in my character’s journey occurred late in the second act, during the conversation between Mark and Roger in “Goodbye Love.” Instead of a sensitive, bonding, soul-searching, more passive scene, Jonathan had fashioned a true confrontation between the two old friends. Mark no longer confessed his weaknesses to Roger; instead, Roger told Mark what his weaknesses were:
Yes, you live a lie—tell you why
You’re always preaching not to be numb
When that’s how you thrive
You pretend to create and observe
When you really detach from feeling alive
To which Mark responded, “Perhaps it’s because I’m the one of us to survive!”
The exchange ended without any real resolution, and all in all it felt much more potent and fraught with conflict and truth than what had been there before.
The song that Jonathan had played for me over the phone while I was working on Twister, “What You Own,” came next, replacing the light musical-comedy number “Real Estate” that had appeared in the same spot a year before. Incredibly challenging to sing, with its long phrases—all belted at the top of my range and the top of my lungs—and its intricate, weaving harmonies, “What You Own” quickly became my favorite song to sing in the show. I loved blasting myself out of my skin as I sang, riding on its propulsive beat, soaring over and through and alongside Adam’s amazing voice. And I found Mark’s opening lyrics to be reflective of my own struggles to come to terms with Mom’s illness and its implications:
Don’t breathe too deep
Don’t think all day
Dive into work
Drive the other way
That drip of hurt
That pint of shame
Goes away
Just play the game
As I sang the song, I knew once again that I shared Mark’s ability to avoid dealing with pain in his personal life by pouring himself into his work. I’d been doing the same thing for the past year as I jumped from one job to the next, hardly calling home, while Mom suffered through her scans and surgery and chemo and radiation treatments and MRIs. I was grateful, however, for this new opportunity to tap into my detachment and fear and put it to use on stage.
Even though we only had two nights and one day off from rehearsal for Christmas, my brother and I flew home. Mom seemed to be continuing her rebound, although she spent most of Christmas Day lying on the couch in the living room, her new favorite spot.
Every year, Mom asked Adam for the same Christmas gift: to draw one of his loony cartoons of our family. Mom treasured the several satirical family portraits he’d made for her over the years, saving them all in a folder and pulling them out once in a while so she could lose herself in laughter. In one, Adam depicted me with the body of a tortoise (for some bizarre, unknown private joke of a reason, he and Anne had taken to calling me “Turtle Boy” that year) but with my own oversized, human head. Adam and Anne had also taken to calling me “Pumpkin Head” that year, in honor of my larger-than-normal cranium, so out of the top of my cartoon head sprouted a pumpkin stalk. (It was far from flattering.) In another portrait, Anne stood in her bra, curling her hair, a goofy, ditzy expression on her face, surrounded by thought balloons filled with crazy images of the various boys on whom she had crushes. Inevitably, Adam’s cartoon versions of himself were flawlessly rugged and muscular and dashing, a detail that made Mom laugh all the more.
For the past several years, however, Adam had stubbornly refused to draw a new portrait for Mom, for no particular reason that I could discern. She’d beg him again and again, but he’d always say no, and he’d always mean it. But this Christmas he came home and holed himself up in his room for a while, finally emerging with a new portrait. Maybe he’d done it now because he knew that he might not have another chance to give Mom what she so deeply wanted.
I was sitting in the living room with Mom when Adam strolled out of his room and handed her the new portrait. I pulled out my camera so I could capture her reaction.
“Oh, Adam, thank you,” Mom said, clutching the piece of paper to her chest before looking at it. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Adam said. He looked sheepish, like he was stifling a bigger smile underneath the small one he’d permitted to cross his face. He leaned down to Mom and gave her a brief hug. “Now look at it,” he said.
Mom laid back down, a bright shaft of sunlight crossing her face, and raised up the portrait to study it. She immediately started laughing her quiet, high-pitched, breathy laugh, her mouth wide open, the force of her laughter squinting up her eyes. I clicked away with my camera.
“Oh, Adam,” she said. “Oh, Adam, you’re a riot.”
“Let me see!” Rachel said, and leaned over the arm of the couch so she could get a look as well. She started giggling with Mom. “That’s funny,” she said. “Adam, you’re funny.”
“You are, Adam,” Mom said. “You’re so good at this.” And then a fresh wave of laughter overtook her. I clicked some more shots. I didn’t even need to look at the portrait myself; I knew it would be brilliant, and I was content to capture her reaction. I loved watching her laugh; it happened so rarely anymore.
My brief visit home ended, and I headed back to New York for more Rent rehearsals, which continued at a productive and wonderful pace. The show was already taking shape, the ensemble blending together beautifully. I was elated by our progress.
At about the midway point in our rehearsals, Michael announced that we were going to come back from our lunch break that day and meet with a guest speaker, a woman named Cy O’Neal, who ran an organization called Friends In Deed. I pricked up my ears at this news; I had heard of Friends In Deed the year before, when I attended their gala benefit, a tenth-anniversary concert performance of Sunday in the Park with George. Since then, I’d been on their mailing list, receiving newsletters that informed me that Friends In Deed was an organization dedicated to offering free counseling and services to anyone faced with a life-threatening illness. This included the caretakers and loved ones of people who were ill, so I’d considered going to a meeting or workshop but had stayed away. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I was afraid of really talking to anyone about how I felt about Mom’s cancer. Maybe because I wasn’t sure I was able to articulate to myself how I felt about it, let alone anyone else, and if I started to open my mouth and express my chaotic, unpredictable, confusing, upsetting feelings, it seemed likely there would be no end to them. Maybe I didn’t go because I thought that most everybody at Friends In Deed was dealing with AIDS and had much more urgent concerns than I. Or maybe it was all simple procrastination on my part. But from the little I knew about Friends In Deed, their work seemed potentially life-changing, so I was happy to be getting the chance to listen to Cy O’Neal speak.