A short biography of Jonathan Larson.
Short video biography of Larson.
Review of Larson's autobiographical show, Tick, Tick...Boom!
Larson's obituary from 1996.
A writer who's been involved with the show since its beginning talks about the dangers of ignoring the script's subtlety in favor of its rock-concert bombast. Also very interesting comments from Jonathan Larson regarding the characters: Collins is a ''a sort of jazzy, Tom Waitsy kind of guy.''
Sarah Schulman claims that Larson plagiarized the plot of her 1990 novel People in Trouble. I don't know if it's true, but she raises some interesting ideas regarding representation in Rent.
Not everyone was crazy about Rent when it opened. Robert Brustein (founder of Yale Rep and American Repertory Theatre at Harvard) called it "sloppy," "poorly constructed," and "mawkish."
- Brustein, Robert. "The New Bohemians." The New Republic, 22 April 1996, 29-30. Print.
