#FEATURE | Waking Up A Generation: The Story of Jonathan Larson (2024)

by Kaleena So & Charly Viñas

On the night of January 25, 1996, at the New York Theatre Workshop, the scene of musical theatre changed forever.

Before the release of Tick, Tick… Boom!, the new award-winning Netflix film adapted from the Off-Broadway musical of the same name, Jonathan Larson had been known primarily as the creator of Rent. You may have heard all about its success: its twelve-year run on Broadway, the multitude of awards it received, or its film adaptation in 2005.

You might have also heard that Larson passed away on the eve of Rent’s first public performance.

Just 10 days before his 36th birthday, Jonathan’s life was cut short. Despite this, his legacy still lives on through his work, most especially the aforementioned Rent and Tick, Tick… Boom! While he never got to see how Rent changed the course of musical theatre, he still left the world with a legacy that has continually served as an inspiration for the artists of today.

Tuning up

They’re singing ‘Happy Birthday’

You just want to lay down and cry

Not just another birthday

It’s 30/90

~ 30/90, Tick, Tick… Boom!

Jonathan David Larson was born on February 4, 1960, to Allen and Nanette Larson in White Plains, New York. Even during his early years, he was surrounded by music and theatre. He sang for his school’s choir and played many musical instruments like the piano, trumpet, and tuba. Most fond of rock and musical theatre, he was inspired by notable musicians, including well-known theatre composer Stephen Sondheim.

Music became more prominent in his life during his college years. With a four-year scholarship, he majored in acting at Adelphi University, involving himself in theatre productions. There, he also began dabbling in music composition, composing the score for a few of his school’s minor productions. He graduated with a degree in Fine Arts and, for the next nine and a half years, worked as a waiter at the Moondance Diner on weekends while spending the rest of his time composing music and working on his musicals.

Real life

How do you document real life

When real life is getting more

Like fiction each day?

~ Rent, RENT

Before he began writing and composing his most famous work Rent, there was the unfinished Tick, Tick… Boom! and, before that, Superbia.

Superbia was a science fiction satire rock musical that depicted a futuristic dystopian universe of a society devoid of emotions, loosely based on George Orwell’s 1984. The musical narrated the story of Josh, an inventor who, unlike everyone else, retained his emotions and spent his life searching for a way to bring back the feelings of society and make an impact on the world. Larson started working on Superbia after he graduated from college in 1982 and conducted a reading of it at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in 1990. He received praise from his idol, Stephen Sondheim, and was commended by various names in the theatre industry. Unfortunately, despite the eight long years he spent creating Superbia’s universe, it was never actually produced.

Faced with rejection and disappointment from his journey writing and producing Superbia, Larson translated this experience into Tick, Tick… Boom!, his semi-autobiographical rock monologue which was originally titled Boho Days. Now a motion-picture directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tick, Tick… Boom! was first staged as a solo man act Off-Broadway. It was also staged at the New York Theatre Workshop, where Larson’s most notable musical, Rent, would make its debut years later.

While Superbia showcased a world far from reality, Tick, Tick… Boom! almost paralleled the events of Larson’s life. Set amidst the New York City AIDS crisis of 1990, this was a story of real life. It showed the struggles of an up-and-coming artist who put in years of work only to be rejected, lost his closest friends to a virus completely out of his control, pursued his passion and love for the arts despite seeing others abandon it for a desk job, and grappled with the fear of turning thirty burdened by the need to create something impactful. This musical was his life in song.

“It is a story about a failure, not a success story. It is one about continuing to pursue one’s dream in the face of rejection, despair, failure, and being forbidden,” said Andrew Garfield, who played Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick… Boom!’s screen adaptation.

Years after he completed Tick, Tick… Boom!, Larson became involved in a project first conceptualized by playwright Billy Aronson in 1988. The latter sparked the idea of La Bohème, a musical inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera of the same name. Instead of the originally showcased Paris bohemian lifestyle, this new musical replaced it with the noise and energy of modern New York.

Larson, eventually allowed to make the musical his own, set the story in Alphabet City in the East Village where he lived. His experiences showcased in Tick, Tick… Boom! influenced the autobiographical aspects of Rent. Similarly set amidst the HIV/AIDS crisis, it features a group of artists and the struggles they experience to build their dreams in search of what matters in their lives.

Rent went on to make its Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996, just months after its Off-Broadway debut at the New York Theatre Workshop. After a 12-year Broadway run, it made its final curtain call on September 7, 2008, becoming one of the longest-running musicals on Broadway. It went on to premiere on West-End (1998), tour in countries including the US, United Kingdom, China, Philippines, South Africa, and Thailand, be performed in 25 languages, and get a screen adaptation in 2005. The Broadway show was awarded three Tony Awards for best musical, best book of a musical, and best original score; Jonathan Larson was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that same year.

In spite of all the praise it received, Jonathan was unfortunately never able to witness it. He suffered from an aortic dissection and died in his home on the morning of Rent’s first paid preview performance on January 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthday. He never got to witness Rent’s success, accept his awards, or see the seemingly endless ripple his work created.

The ripple effect

What does it take to wake up a generation?

How can you make someone take off and fly?

~ Louder Than Words, Tick, Tick… Boom!

In Tick, Tick… Boom!’s Netflix adaptation, we see the influence the acclaimed musical theatre figure Stephen Sondheim (composer of acclaimed musicals Into the Woods & West Side Story) has on Larson. As Larson’s mentor, he is seen providing him feedback and encouragement in the film, but what happened in real life was more than that.

Larson set the stage for aspiring musical theatre composers of our generation by helping them unlock the secrets to a great musical. Tick, Tick… Boom! does not only tell the story of Larson’s life but also presents us with a curriculum to follow. Many of the lessons he learned as a composer, he discovered from Stephen Sondheim’s mentorship. Sondheim was a major factor in Larson’s decision to become a composer; the latter had been planning on becoming an actor, but Sondheim saw potential and encouraged Larson to become a composer instead.

Sondheim’s mentorship went beyond what is shown in the movie. He wrote recommendation letters for Larson and even invited him to observe the early stages of the creation of Into the Woods. This was the beginning of a ripple for theatre composers, as Sondheim believed he owed it to his own mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II of the theatre-writing duo Rodgers and Hammerstein (composers of iconic musicals The Sound of Music, Cinderella, & Oklahoma!), to pay it forward to theatre composers of the succeeding generations. Sondheim was first given access to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Allegro, where he acted as Hammerstein’s assistant. Sondheim later on mirrored this action when he allowed Larson to observe the creation of his own musical.

Hammerstein created a blueprint for Sondheim to follow: take a good play, a bad play, and a non-play (such as a book) and turn each of them into a musical until you arrive at an original idea, which you can transform into your original music. This seems to be what Sondheim had also taught Larson, which is evidenced by the latter’s decision to first adapt the book 1984.

Larson might not have lived long enough to mentor the composers of our generation in person, but the ripple continues.

In an interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda during a rehearsal for Tick, Tick… Boom!’s Encores! Off-Center Revival, he stated that the musical was “a sneak preview of what [his] life would be,” “a blueprint for [him] to follow,” and “a way to face the fear of being an artist in New York.” Through Tick, Tick… Boom!, Larson was still able to pass on his knowledge by showing the realities of being an artist and attempting to achieve success, while still being able to instill hope in the artists beginning to lose it. And with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s many successful works such as Hamilton, In the Heights, and Encanto, and of course, his direction of Tick, Tick… Boom!, he is also able to pay tribute to Jonathan Larson and thank him for his long-lasting impact on theatre.

Revolutionizing musical theatre

What binds the fabric together

When the raging, shifting winds of change

Keep ripping away?

~ Rent, RENT

Jonathan Larson greatly revolutionized the course of musical theatre by bringing together two very different genres: rock and theatrical music. He noticed that the divide between pop music and theatre was getting larger and larger; the majority of the people seeing Broadway shows were less of the youth and more of the older generations since the musical scores of the shows running on Broadway at the time were representative of the pop music during the olden days.

Larson aimed to change this even if people were adamant about it because he strongly believed that there was no real reason the two genres could not coexist. He did not limit himself, however, to purely rock. While Rent is classified as a rock musical, it also includes many other genres and, in a way, still retains traditional theatrical music. The song Today 4 U from Rent showcases the house and rap genres, while its most famous track, Seasons of Love, is a gospel song. This is what makes Larson’s works so unique and what pushed the composers of this generation to do the same.

In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s case, his critically acclaimed musical, Hamilton, garnered popularity because of how diverse the music genres were. He was able to incorporate classic show tunes as well as hip-hop, R&B, rap, and jazz. One of his other famous works, In the Heights, is no exception to this. Since the musical is centered in a Latin neighborhood in Washington Heights, New York City, Miranda was able to make this musical distinct and representative of its core by infusing Latin American genres such as salsa and merengue. Along with these, he was still able to incorporate other genres like hip-hop and R&B.

In an interview with TODAY, Miranda stated that “[he] believed musical theatre should be in communication with pop music” and “[he] believed in bringing the kinds of music we love to musical theatre.” This is something he saw while watching Rent; and in turn, it inspired him to write about what he knew, just like what Larson did with Rent.

The community he loved

Everyone who ever has or ever will be anyone will be there.

~ Unfinished song from Superbia

“Try writing about what you know,” said Rosa Stevens (Jonathan’s agent) in the film Tick, Tick… Boom! It was this line that set the stage for Rent’s story. Both of Larson’s musicals — Tick, Tick… Boom! and Rent — paralleled his life, from his own struggles as an artist to the people in his community. What set his musicals apart from those in the early ’90s was their realism, as they showcased the struggle and burdens of community members people could resonate with. He wanted human conversations and themes in his work.

“He wrote about his friends who were dying of this plague [the AIDS crisis] and it felt very personal,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda about Tick, Tick… Boom!’s legacy. Larson’s musicals talked about life, but more specifically, building one around what you love — the things, the places, the people — despite the struggles.

Rent is arguably one of the most diverse musicals out there. Writing about his home in Alphabet City, Larson created a community Broadway needed to see: one that represented a diverse group of people that had never yet been given much attention. These people didn’t live as societal stereotypes but as sympathetic people with stories to tell. Despite being a white, cis-gendered, Jewish man, Jonathan centered on many characters who were different from himself and did so with love and compassion. He defended the communities he cherished through his work and was determined to humanize those who were not.

Waking up a generation

There’s only us, there’s only this

Forget regret or life is yours to miss

No other path, no other way

No day but today

~ No Day But Today, RENT

“He heard this ticking clock and sang about the fear of turning thirty, and he never reached forty,” said Lin Manuel Miranda while reflecting on Jonathan Larson’s legacy.

Living with the knowledge of the ephemerality of life was something present not only in his songs but also in Larson’s own life. While no one knows how much time they really have left on Earth, Larson still set a deadline for himself, later on realizing that it was pointless. As he thought more about the future, he’d forgotten to live in the present.

This realization hit him once he started seeing more of his friends die from HIV/AIDS. He began to see the fleeting nature of life in a new light, which he later projected onto his musicals. So, despite the hardship and failures, Larson found the will to carry on, as evidenced by his decision to start writing Tick, Tick… Boom!

These musicals don’t remind us of the life we lost; rather, they depict the life we get to experience today. No Day But Today from Rent further strengthens this notion — that the only thing we can ever be sure of is right now, this very moment we are living in.

One of the most important things Larson was able to teach us is the importance of living a life surrounded by the people you love. His life is a message to the youth at large — life will always have its struggles, but these struggles will be worth it as long as you love what you do.

Last February 4 would have been his 62nd birthday; and with that in mind, we celebrate his life and his legacy, his words, and his stories. Through perseverance and bravery, he was able to change lives and provide representation to the unheard and marginalized, thus fulfilling one of his ultimate goals: waking up a generation.

Before the Off-Broadway premiere of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote in his piece with the New York Times, “Jonathan, if you can hear me, you fulfilled every promise and then some. We continue to perform your work, and when we do, someone else’s life is changed. Someone else has permission to tell their story because you told yours. Someone else has permission to dream as big as you did. Someone else will struggle to do his best with the time they have. Someone else will try to find the right words to thank you, thank you, thank you.”

This was the story of Jonathan Larson — not of his death, but of his life.

You can find out more about Jonathan Larson and his works in the documentary No Day But Today: The Story of ‘Rent’ and the referenced film Tick, Tick…Boom! streaming on Netflix.