I've not used my blog for a long, long time, however on this Christmas Day, I feel its important that I need to talk about something that happened to me this year that changed my life. In January of this year, I was cast in a production of Jonathan Larson's RENT.
RENT is like no other production, RENT changes people, RENT changed me.
The show is set in America, at the end of the millennium, it focuses on a group of friends, artists living in New Yorks East village, with no money, no heat, no means to pay the rent, and the threat of death around the corner. Most of the group are living with AIDS or HIV. The show teaches to live for the day, to "forget regret" and to live under the mantra "No Day But Today"
On the 25th January 1996, RENT had it's final dress rehearsal to an astounded audience at the New York Theatre Workshop two weeks before it opened officially. That night after the performance, the shows creator Jonathan Larson went home, collapsed and died alone on the floor of his apartment after suffering from an aortic aneurysm. He was thirty-five. Jonathan never saw his masterpiece performed.
The show stands as a tribute to his life and ran on Broadway until September 2008.
I was honoured to play a principal roll in the show. Jonathan created such a life affirming book and score, it teaches that the values of friendship and love are so much more important than any material possession. It has given me a completely different outlook on life, I have been changed.
Please, if you have the opportunity, find a production of the show and see it! Buy the DVD, listened to the soundtrack, but most importantly, measure your life in love and remember there really is "NO DAY BUT TO DAY"
