Member-only story
When success and tragedy collide.
Jonathan waited tables for years while he wrote. A talented and driven man.
Jonathan composed music and lyrics as well as wrote plays.
He did everything right. Got a college scholarship to major in acting. Graduated and pursued his passion He started acting in plays but decided to put that on hold on composing and writing.
During his college years, he had begun music composition, composing music first for small student productions, called cabarets.
Focus, Focus, Focus. This dude was not messing around.
Jonathan waited tables, and also got some singing gigs, while he wrote and composed music.
Then finally, the play Rent was born.
In 1988, a playwright named Billy Aronson was writing a musical play and in 1989, Jonathan Larson jumped in.
Jonathan came up with the title Rent and suggested moving the setting from the Upper West Side to Lower Manhattan, where Larson and his roommates lived in a rundown apartment.
