A 30th anniversary production of a landmark Tony Award-winning Broadway musical is booked for a December run at Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara.
Rent by Jonathan Larson, which also won the Puliter Prize, follows a group of young artists and musicians in New York City’s East Village in the early 1990s as they struggle to survive and create in the shadow of the AIDS crisis.
“These young artists—fighting for their art, their love, and their survival—are as urgent and necessary today as they were when Rent first shook Broadway,” according to ETC executive director Scott DeVine. “It reminds us why we go to the theatre: to be seen, to be moved, and to be reminded that ‘five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes’ of any life matter.”
The rock musical, directed by Pesha Rudnick with musical direction by David Lamoureux and choreography by Christina McCarthy, begins previews on December 2 and runs through December 20 at the New Vic Theatre, 33 Victoria Street in Santa Barbara.