A historical guide to Jonathan Larson's New York City

Tepper: "Off Broadway’s nonprofit New York Theatre Workshop holds a central place in the development of Rent. Jonathan began working on Rent in 1989, when he was 29 years old. He pitched the musical to NYTW in 1992; they mounted its first reading in 1993 and a studio production in 1994. Rent premiered there in 2016, and Jonathan attended rehearsals for the show in the final days of his life. But never got to see how it played in front of a full public audience: He died on the night before the production’s first preview performance."

Tepper: "The final reading of Jonathan’s original musical Superbia was held at the Public’s Shiva Theater in December 1991. Superbia was a futuristic dystopian musical about the lack of human connection in a technology-burdened world; its combination of pop music and musical theater paved the way for work that Jonathan would create later. Although Superbia received a number of developmental readings, it was never fully produced."

Tepper: "The fictional East Village apartment building where Rent’s Mark, Roger, and Mimi live is located on the corner of 11th Street and Avenue B, and many of the show’s scenes take place in Mark and Roger’s industrial loft space there. The Alphabet City corner where Rent’s characters lived is very different now than it was when Jonathan wrote the show; the neighborhood became heavily gentrified within a few years of Rent’s premiere. (Although many people assume that Jonathan must have lived nearby, he actually lived near Soho for most of his NYC life.)"

Tepper: "The 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot was among the inspirations for Rent. Protests began when the city imposed a curfew aimed at curtailing the park’s squatters and homeless inhabitants, and a violent police crackdown on the protesters triggered a full-scale riot on August 6."

Tepper: "Alphabet City’s Life Cafe was the setting of Rent’s now-iconic Act I finale 'La Vie Boheme.' The scrappy East Village locale was always filled with folks who lived nearby, and Jonathan often sat in the corner there to draw inspiration from them when he was working on Rent. A bench at the Life Cafe was dedicated in his name after he died, and Rentheads would often visit to pay tribute. When the Life Cafe closed in 2011, after 30 years in business, the bench was moved to Long Island’s Adelphi University, Jonathan’s alma mater."

Tepper: "Jonathan celebrated his 35th birthday at Bowery Bar, which was familiarly and then officially known as BBar: a popular nightclub and restaurant that was the site of a gas station before it became a hot spot in 1994. BBar closed in 2020; its footprint is now occupied by a high-rise building." 

Tepper: "Jonathan celebrated several occasions—including a reading of Rent at New York Theatre Workshop—at the nightclub and restaurant Fez, located underneath the Time Cafe from 1992 to 2005. That space has been occupied by Lafayette Grand Café and Bakery since 2013."

Tepper: "In Jonathan’s lifetime, the dream for Rent was that, if its New York Theatre Workshop went amazingly well, it might transfer to a commercial Off Broadway venue. One prominent contender, just a block north of NYTW, had high ceilings and an East Village aesthetic that felt perfect for Rent: Beethoven Hall, which was built in 1860 and had served as a social hall for many years before becoming a film studio. The space is now a private residence."

Tepper: "The Village Gate was a popular Off Broadway theater and music venue from 1958 until 1994, housing shows including the hit revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris and the smutty musical Let My People Come. When Jonathan was having trouble getting his early shows produced, he and his close friend Victoria Leacock Hoffman rented the Gate to present his work. Superbia was presented there in September 1989. ('Money can’t buy the devotion, support and positive energy I've received from every single person involved in not only tonight's concert, but every demo tape, reading, workshop and rewrite,' Jonathan wrote in the program.) For 1990’s tick, tick… BOOM!, Jonathan and Victoria did their own 3am wheatpasting of advertisements for the show all over the West Village. A significant portion of the former Gate is now the club and music venue Le Poisson Rouge, which opened in 2008."

Tepper: "Jonathan and several of his friends were in the outside orbit of the hot theater company Naked Angels, who staged socially and politically engaged theater at their home base, the Space, a former picture frame factory. Several of the songs in The Jonathan Larson Project were written for specific Naked Angels shows, in which Jonathan participated alongside artists including Jane Krakowski, Matthew Broderick, Peter Gallagher, Joe Mantello and Theresa Rebeck. Naked Angels left The Space in 1995; it is now a doctor’s office."

Tepper: "Prior to Rent, the Nederlander had largely fallen into disuse. Built in 1921, it was often empty—used for rehearsals but not productions—in 1992, when Jonathan and his close friend Jonathan Burkhart rode their bikes past it and decided to break inside. It was dirty and musty; Larson ran on stage and started clapping and singing to test the acoustics, and expressed frustration that he couldn’t get a show produced while Broadway theaters like the Nederlander sat empty. After his death, when his family and friends were deciding where Rent should go, this memory was one reason they chose the Nederlander. Rent breathed new life into the theater and Broadway as a whole: It ran for more than 12 years, and the Nederlander has been filled with shows ever since. Idina Menzel is currently there in new musical Redwood, using the same dressing room she had when she originated the role of Maureen in Rent."

Tepper: "When he was still in college, Jonathan traveled to the city from Long Island to see Sweeney Todd at the Uris, Broadway’s largest theater. It became one of his favorite shows by his hero and mentor, Stephen Sondheim. Jonathan’s souvenir pin from Sweeney Todd—given to me by his sister, Julie Larson, when The Jonathan Larson Project was mounted in concert in 2018—is one of my most prized possessions. (I carried it on the set of the tick, tick… BOOM! film.) The Uris was renamed the Gershwin in 1983, and Wicked has been playing there since 2004."

Tepper: "Jonathan saw the 1979 musical They’re Playing Our Song at the Imperial Theatre and, inspired, scribbled one of Carole Bayer Sager’s lyrics for the show on his Playbill: 'Does the man make the music or does the music make the man.' The upcoming musical Smash is set to open at the Imperial in April."

Tepper: "The musical tick, tick… BOOM! dramatizes Jonathan’s experience developing his musical Superbia at Playwrights Horizons. In 1988, Superbia was seen in workshop form at the old Playwrights building, which was demolished in 2001; the current Playwrights Horizons facility opened in 2003 on the same spot."

Tepper: "Jonathan met Scott Burkell and future Broadway leading lady Marin Mazzie while doing summer-stock theater in his early 20s. The three became good friends and created a campy club act called J. Glitz. They performed Larson originals as well as covers at cabaret venues including Don’t Tell Mama, which is still going strong, and Panache, then located above a trendy creperie on East 57th Street."

Tepper: "Jonathan did research at the Library for the Performing Arts when he was writing songs for The Naked Truth, a 1990 Naked Angels show about censorship. The Jonathan Larson Project features one of these songs, 'The Truth is a Lie,' Jonathan’s take on fake news."

Tepper: "The majority of songs that Jonathan recorded within his lifetime were recorded with his collaborator Steve Skinner in his studio, which was located in a residential building. The first three songs for Rent—'Santa Fe,' 'I Should Tell You,' and 'Rent'—were recorded on a demo at Steve’s Nervous Music studio, as were several of the pop songs, intended for the radio, that now appear in The Jonathan Larson Project.

Tepper: "Jonathan received a showcase production of his musical Saved!—billed as 'An Immoral Musical on the Moral Majority'—at this theater in 1983, when he was 23 years old and had just moved to the city. Jonathan wrote the music and David Armstrong handled the book and lyrics; The space is now Pure Paws Veterinary Care."

Tepper: "In December 1990, Jonathan Larson contributed to an immersive Naked Angels project called Angel Sent Me, which was set in the Prohibition Era. His song 'Break Out the Booze' is included in The Jonathan Larson Project. The show was presented at Club Tatou, where Mariah Carey had her professional showcase debut that same year; it is now an Empire Steak House."

Tepper: "Jonathan wrote tick, tick… BOOM! as an autobiographical solo rock monologue for himself to perform. It made its debut at the McGinn/Cazale, under the title Boho Days, in a 1990 workshop presented by Second Stage, which was the theater’s main tenant from 1984 until 2002 (and has produced work by emerging playwrights there since). WP Theater is the space’s primary occupant today."

Tepper: "When Jonathan moved to NYC after his graduation from Adelphi in 1982, he lived for a year on West End Avenue near 98th Street. At one point, Jonathan and his roommate Todd Robinson found a junky old piano on the street and rolled it into the tiny apartment they shared; Jonathan wrote several of the songs in The Jonathan Larson Project on this piano. (He later moved to 508 Greenwich Street, where he lived for more than a decade.)"

Tepper: "Director Maggie Lally assembled a 1991 show at the New York Repertory Theatre called Skirting The Issues—its tag line was 'The post-Barbie generation takes aim at everything'—that ran for two weeks and featured songs and scenes by ten different writers. One of those writers was Jonathan, whom Lally knew from college; his contribution was a song called 'White Male World,' which now appears in Jonathan Larson Project. The former theater space is now a Crunch Gym."