"Over the Moon": The Creation and Development of Rent by Jonathan Larson

Abstract

Despite its critical acclaim and commercial success, the hit musical Rent by Jonathan Larson has received scant attention in academic literature. The story of Rent has been told and retold in the popular media, but a look at Larson's own drafts, notes, and other personal writings adds another important and largely missing voice - Larson's own. In this study, I use the Jonathan Larson Collection, donated to the Library of Congress in 2004, to examine this seminal work and composer by tracing Rent's development and documenting Larson's creative process. My analysis of material from the Larson Collection and the interviews of others involved in Rent's development reveals the story of how this unconventional rock musical made it to the stage, highlighting the importance of vision, but also of revision and collaboration.