wow, i can't believe rent is ending. well i guess i can; ever since joey fatone was allowed on that stage, it was clear that show was no longer a groundbreaking and original piece of theater, but another beauty and the beast or mama mia for a bensonhurst boy to dream of singing in. but let's take a step back to more than ten years ago, when i was in seventh grade. to be fair, i am a huge musical fan, which is probably why i was initially drawn to the show. but for real, that show made me grow up. i remember singing innocently "to leather, to dildos," when my sister informed me what a dildo was. i remember spending the night on 41st street to get the student rush tickets, and meeting all kinds of alternative (read: gay) people. i remember meeting taye diggs before he helped stella get her groove back. i remember sewing my own little aids quilt for a bio project. i remember lecturing the people in my art class about why they should be accepting of gay people, long before i knew that title applied to myself.
it's hard to reconcile my feelings about rent with the fact that pretty much every teenaged girl was obsessed with it. i like to think of myself as somewhat original, or off the beaten track in personal taste. but i guess it doesn't really matter what the show meant for anyone else. for me, it was a catapult into adulthood, and an awakening to the realities of the world, in all its complexities, that i never got out of "carousel."