'Rent': The Cast Looks Back

Image credit: Joan Marcus

Rent plans to close its Broadway doors June 1, 2008. It will have played 12 years and 5,012 performances.

Rapp: There's this piece of my life that lives on in my city. I walk down Seventh Avenue and there's the marquee — there's something incredibly comforting about that. It's like a touchstone. But over the years I've heard so many people express to me, ''I can't wait to get the chance to play that role.'' Now many people are gonna get those chances.

Seller: Most people's experience of Broadway [plays] is from the show being produced by their high school or community theater or college. That'll be our next chapter.

Martin: I'm really psyched about seeing, like, the Poughkeepsie Day School's production of Rent. I think that's kinda cool.

Menzel: I can't imagine how much it will help young people struggling with their own sexuality to be able to have that play. What an incredible gift. Jonathan will now live on in younger generations, and it will just keep getting passed on, and be timeless.

Regardless of Rent's enduring impact on the public, it has left those involved with its creation profoundly changed, both personally and professionally.

Pascal: It made me a less bigoted person. As forward-thinking as you like to think that you are, if you grow up in white suburbia, you're gonna grow up with prejudices. Having the chance to do this show and meet all of these people and fall in love with all of these people — it opened me up to the love of other cultures and sexual orientations.

Rubin-Vega: It's about living in the moment and loving in the moment. I think that that's a very beautiful and noble message. The older we get, the more we just say, ''Oh, f--- that s---, must make money. I need to be safe for me and my kids, so maybe they can afford to have those feelings.'' Rent tells you it's not about affording things, it's about affording to have that space in your heart.

Rapp: It validated the idealistic part of me. When people come together and take a stand and speak about things that make a difference, that can have a huge impact on the world. And one of the reasons the intervening years have gotten hard is that I had such a profound meal of that. It was so delicious, and then when the work I was doing was just a little more shallow, that's what I missed the most — being a part of something vital and important.

Martin: I got spoiled by the experience. You go into subsequent projects assuming that you're gonna have this crazy camaraderie, and everybody's gonna jive, and it's going to be an amazing collaborative effort — and then it's just a regular-ass play.

Menzel: We always knew what was real and how we got there. And I feel like I try to remember that through my entire life, and all the big and small accomplishments that I've had since then, and you know, take things with a grain of salt, to remember how precious it all is.

Heredia: I felt like, for once, I was part of the club.

Kelly: I don't see the Rent folk as much as I'd like to, but there is this connection with everybody. It just feels like, ''Oh, okay, I know you.'' We went through this thing, and no one else can really understand it. It sounds kind of like we're precious about it. We're not.

Larson: Everything I did, I did ostensibly for Jonny. But at the heart of it, I did it because it made me feel a little better. My message then and my message still is, if you give me my druthers, you can have the show and all the success, if Jonny could still be alive. Bittersweet was the word that everybody used at the time. And it was bittersweet, except a hell of a lot more bitter than sweet. I really did love my kid. And I just hated to see him cheated of what he'd worked so hard for. And I still do.