Rent

When Rent opened in 1996, the United States was still grappling with the HIV/AIDS crisis that began in the early 1980s, but the landscape of HIV/AIDS-centered activism had changed. New drug therapies were making it possible to extend the life expectancies of those who were diagnosed, but treatments were prohibitively expensive, and activist organizations were focused on increasing access to medication and promoting preventative education. As an adaptation of La Bohème, Rent’s focus on HIV/AIDS was a logical substitution for the earlier work’s centering of consumption (tuberculosis) as an illness disproportionately affecting those living in marginalized communities. But La Bohème is a tragic opera that ends with the heroine’s death, and Rent came about during the second generation of AIDS dramas. The first generation of AIDS plays occurred while the disease was new, and those works focused on comprehending, educating, and the pathos of shared mourning for the lost. The second generation emphasized living with and coping with the disease’s continued presence. Whether or not Rent can be considered an AIDS play is questionable, as it isn’t educational or even carefully accurate in its use of AIDS as a plot device. It isn’t specifically a work about AIDS any more than it’s a work about drug addiction, poverty, or people who are unhoused.