RENT

Stellar Academy of Fine Arts presents the musical, RENT. The story integrates contemporary music and dance to tell an emotional tale about a community of young artists who celebrate life while struggling to make it in New York%u2019s East Village. Based on Puccini%u2019s La Bohème, RENT is a modern day story of love and loyalty that utilizes pop, rock %u2018n roll, R&B and Latin, to single-handedly reinvigorate Broadway. It focuses on the lives of Mark, a film-maker, whose girlfriend, Maureen, a drama queen performance-artist-turned-lesbian, leaves him for another woman, Joanne who is an attorney. Mark lives with his roommate Roger, a struggling musician who just wants to write %u201Cone great song%u201D before he dies of AIDS. One day he meets Mimi, an S&M dancer also with AIDS, and who is addicted to heroin. They fall in love. Mark and Roger%u2019s ex-roommate Tom Collins, a philosopher, who has just returned from M.I.T meets and falls in love with Angel, a Latino street-drummer/drag queen. They also have AIDS. Mark and Roger are continuously hounded by their ex-roommate Benny, who is now their extremely wealthy landlord begging them for the rent. It focuses on a year in their lives, and their struggles of paying the rent, eviction, death, drugs, and living one day at a time.