The musical Rent plays an important role not only in the history of American musical theatre, but also in the lives, hearts, and minds of that special class of earnest young people: The Theatre Kid. While I was not one formally, the soundtrack of Rent played so frequently throughout my childhood that the songs feel indelible to my youth, even if their subject matters eluded me. So unaware was I of the implications of the musical’s story, that it only occurred to me this past fall (2024), while listening to the director of the New York Theatre Workshop’s original production of Rent, Michael Grief, speak that Rent was a musical about the starving artists in The East Village. This realization is so ridiculously obvious, that it fails to be amusing, but it speaks to the mindset of a young show-tune-loving person: sometimes the rhapsody of a song is enough to enthrall. Forests don’t need to be identified. You can gape at the trees. My realization this October established a need to entirely re-formulate my relationship with the musical of my youth. I had to reexamine the show and its creator in relation to my new understanding. When I learned The Jonathan Larson Project– an evening-length performance of previously unrecorded songs by Jonathan Larson– would be at The Orpheum Theatre in the East Village, I jumped at the opportunity to speak to Jennifer Ashley Tepper, the woman responsible for the show’s conception. Tepper, who has been working on the show since 2014, came to know Larson as a young person and was so taken with his work, that she continued to explore until she came across his unheard songs. With the permission of Larson’s family, both his sister Julie and his late father Al, she continued to research and develop the show delving into Jonathan’s papers at The Library of Congress. A perfect way to gain insight! Read on to hear about the process of creating The Jonathan Larson Project, Larson’s technological savviness, his correspondence with Stephen Sondheim, and what may have come of him had he not tragically died the evening before Rent’s opening in 1996.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Eve Bromberg: I grew up listening to Rent! I had an older sibling who was queer and obsessed with Rent, so Jonathan Larson has a big emotional place in my childhood. I’ve realized recently that this is quite a common experience for a lot of people. This is my roundabout way of asking how you got involved in the project. Did you know him?
Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I love that. We’ve found throughout the process that everyone has their Jonathan Larson story, and point of access. It’s such a beautiful, universal thing, though everyone’s is a bit different. My story is I grew up in Boca Raton in South Florida and was very much a theatre kid. I found the Rent original cast recording, that two-disk set, and it blew my mind and world wide open. I was obsessed and also with the Tick Tick Boom cast recording and got to see both shows on tour in Florida, and during my first-ever trip to New York got to see Rent on Broadway. Jonathan Larson’s work was just so influential to me. It taught me what musical theatre could be and showed me that musical theatre could reach a new generation in the groundbreaking way that Jonathan did.
EB: Do you remember how you first encountered the cast album?
JAP: I believe that my mom bought me The Rent album. I always asked for cast recordings for Chanukah. I think I was 11 or 12, and my mom got it for me. She was always so supportive of my and my sister’s love for musical theatre, both she and my dad nurtured it. We listened to the cast recording constantly both in her car and in the house. We bought more than one copy of it because we wore out the CDs!
EB: I remember listening to “Light my candle” with my older sister. She would always mute the part when Mimi talks about being tied up.
JAP: My dad and I would always drive in his car and listen to cast albums and the number one song we would duet to was “Light my Candle” not for a second thinking about how inappropriate it was.
EB: How did this project come about? Is there a literary executor in charge of Jonathan Larson’s work?
JAP: Jonathan Laron’s estate has a representative who’s been instrumental in the process, Jonathan Mills, and then Julie Larson, Jonathan’s sister, is very much in charge of carrying on Jonathan’s legacy. The project started in 2014 when I did a miniature concert (of what would become The Jonathan Larson) in the lobby of New York City Center after a performance of Tick Tick Boom. It was called The Lobby Project and it included five unheard songs. At that point, I got in touch with the Larson family about turning this into a full evening of songs at 54 Below where I am Creative Programming Director. Jonathan’s family, including his father Al– who was with us then– and his sister Julie gave me permission to pursue the project so I started going to The Library of Congress in Washington DC and researching all of Jonathan’s papers and tapes– everything he left when he died– to determine what kind of song cycle it could be that would represent him and speak to us in the present day. I discovered so much incredible material, and so many treasures of musical theatre research heaven, and in 2018 we did a concert at 54 Below for twelve performances with an incredible cast and band. Charlie Rosen was the musical director then. We continued to work on the show, brought on John Simpkins as the director, had a workshop in 2024, and now we’re premiering off-Broadway in 2025. Along the way, we made an album of the concert, which had gotten a lot of the songs out there. We’re blessed that the estate and Larson family have said continually said yes to this development and have supported the idea that there could be a new musical composed of songs not previously heard.
EB: Was that performance of Tick Tick Boom an Encores performance at City Center?
JAP: Yes! Encores’ had a series called Encores Off-Center, where they would do off-Broadway shows. When Tick Tick Boom was on, they had an artist board I was a part of and the artist board would do these lobby project events to compliment the show you were about to see. What’s crazy to think about is how that artist board is how I came to create The Jonathan Larson Project. The other people on the artist board were people like Shaina Taub and Michael R. Jackson, Sam Pinkleton, and MJ Rodriguez who were all artists starting at the time who have gone on to do incredible things. Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda was starring in Tick Tick Boom at the time, so he was around, and my work on The Jonathan Larson Project led me to work on the film Tick Tick Boom, so it’s all very connected.
EB: What did you do for the film? I just watched it recently and cried through the whole thing!
JAP: I was the historian consultant on the film. I had such intimate knowledge of the collection at The Library of Congress, Jonathan’s family and friends, and background and stories, that I was able to be around to be a sort of historian on the project as it evolved.
EB: So all of his papers went to The Library of Congress? Did any of his materials end up at a university as well?
JAP: As far as I know, everything is at The Library of Congress. It took several years to process, and actually, it was incredible. Some of the librarians who processed the collection did the work without which The Jonathan Larson Project wouldn’t exist, were at the show the other night, which was so wonderful. The show exists because of them. They made the show happen.
EB: What about Larson’s alma mater, Hofstra? Do they have any of his materials?
JAP: He went to Adelphi on Long Island, actually they have a lot of great pieces of Jonathan Larson’s history. They have a bench from The Life Cafe where Jonathan wrote parts of Rent. When the cafe went out of business, they gave the bench to the school. They also have framed photos of Jonathan’s performances in college and copies of a lot of the musicals he created when he was at Adelphi, so I guess there are a lot of Adelphi-specific materials related to Jonathan that are there.
EB: When you were going through his papers, did you come across any correspondence with Sondheim?
JAP: Yes! One thing that’s unique about the Jonathan Larson collection he used floppy disks to save all his work. There were not a lot of other musical theatre writers whose collections have gone into collections that were collected on floppy disks! He was very technologically forward for his time. You would think in the collection there would be a ton of letters from Sondheim, but what I found were typed versions of the letters Jonathan sent Sondheim. In one instance he thanked Sondheim for feedback on Tick Tick Boom. I, of course, wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that feedback session, but at least we have proof it happened.
EB: Do you think Sondheim thought highly of Larson and believed in his talent?
JAP: Definitely. He let Jonathan observe rehearsals for the original Into The Woods and gave him feedback on Tick Tick Boom, Superbia, and Rent. There’s one fascinating recording at The Library of Jonathan presenting songs from Superbia and several established writers giving him feedback, one of those writers is Sondheim. Sondheim admired what Jonathan was doing to incorporate pop music and music you’d hear on the radio, with musical theatre. It seems like Sondheim believed Jonathan had so much potential and was on his way to writing something that would have a gigantic impact and continued to give him advice and feedback throughout his career.
EB: So putting the project together, there’s no Rent or Tick Tick Boom, but mostly new unknown songs?
JAP: There’s a song that was cut from Tick Tick Boom and Rent and then a lof the other songs are songs written for unproduced musicals like Superbia and a National Lampoon political musical that was never produced. Some songs are for the radio, and one-night benefit events or short-lived cabarets. There are stand-alone theatre songs never recorded. There have been some opportunities to hear these songs over the years, for instance, one song called “Posing the Furniture”, which Jonathan wrote for a one-night event in the 80s and then later on, after Jonathan passed, Audra Mcdonald performed. There’s footage of this performance on YouTube, but it hadn’t been recorded before. If you’re an aficionado, you may recognize some songs, for instance, the song “Love Heals” that was on The Rent movie soundtrack, but we’re not doing well-known Larson songs. It is a collection of lesser-heard work.
EB: Is there a narrative overlaying the evening of music? Or is the story the collection of songs?
JAP: There is not a traditional book, but there’s a structure to the evening where the characters and the situations they’re in are connected throughout the evening and it feels like the characters are putting forth several ideas Jonathan had that connect in different ways. I would say that it’s more than a song cycle but is not quite a traditional book musical. It’s kind of a new structure, its own animal really, where the songs stack on top of each other and add up to a whole that has a story without being a traditional narrative.
EB: What are the themes that come up in these songs?
JAP: It was so striking to me, throughout the research process, to find so many songs that were so explicitly political. He wrote so many songs about the earth and environment and political corruption. One character, played by Jason Tam, has a song called “Iron Mike” about the Exon Valdez Oil Spill and our effect on the environment, and then a song called “Pura Vida” that’s a very different approach and perspective but also about the earth. “Pura Vida” is also on a different scale– Tam sings about the elemental makeup of the planet. Taylor Iman Jones has a song about trying to get over a lover and then later in the show, she sings a completely different song about love and personal connection. They’re all these themes, personal and political, related to being an artist and a New Yorker, that Jonathan is exploring, and even if it isn’t in order– it may appear in the second or tenth song– the themes appear more than once through out the evening.
EB: I also saw in your Times piece that there’s mention of Trump.
JAP: There are a lot of references in the show that are from the 80s and 90s and though they’re of their time they’re rather topical to today. There have been a few gasps in the audience during some of the more resonant references like Trump being in the show, which we didn’t add. That was Jonathan! There’s also an interesting experience of hearing lyrics where the themes are relatable even if the specifics are different. On the best of days, it makes me hopeful that Jonathan and the people who came before us were fighting for a lot of things we’re continuing the fight for. On the worst days, it feels as if we’ve made no progress. But, it resonates no matter what’s going on in the world on a given day. I think our show speaks to everything. It’s amazing how much Jonathan was writing about that I was just discussing with my friend. There’s a song in the show called “Rhapsody”, that’s about the haves and have-nots, and the fact that New York is filled with both striving artists and incredibly rich people. The song feels like it could have been part of a recent conversation.
EB: He was so prophetic! We weren’t ready for him. Okay, my last question, in your dream of dreams, what would Jonathan Larson’s life be like today? Would he still be a starving artist?
JAP: The worst part of the show is the tragedy that the person who gave this work that we’re celebrating isn’t here to enjoy that success. I think in the alternate version of this story, Rent would have been a gigantic success and the first of many musicals written by Jonathan Larson. From what I know, and what I’ve gleaned from his early career, he was always embracing new technology and new ideas. I think he would have continued to evolve and we would have seen Jonathan Larson’s Musical TV shows and movies. Jonathan Larson loved musical theatre so much that he was so angry that the theaters were so empty. I think we would have been so lucky to have him around to push the boundaries of what musical theatre can be, but this project is a window into what else might have happened.
EB: I read that you spent a lot of time in his apartment in the East Village.
JAP: It’s actually at 508 Greenwich, the border of Soho.
EB: Maybe he would have bought the apartment!
JAP: A lot of times during this experience I’ve gotten excited about going places he went. His apartment is a big one, but also bars and performance spaces he frequented. Being at The Orpheum in the East Village is so wonderful because we’re by New York Theatre Workshop where Rent premiered. He spent so much time in the East Village writing Rent, but living on the West Side, and spent a lot of time there as well. It’s been so inspiring to be enmeshed in Jonathan Larson’s New York. His family and friends have come to the show and shared things about him and I didn’t know. I’m still getting to learn about him.
Leave a Reply