Attention, Rentheads! You officially have one chance left to be in the room at the Richard Rodgers Theatre for the upcoming 30th anniversary Broadway reunion concert of Jonathan Larson‘s Rent, set for October 26.
Tickets for the event, which will feature much of the 1996 musical’s landmark original cast returning alongside a host of special guests, sold out almost immediately. But 24 lucky fans will have a chance to purchase $30 tickets via a digital lottery. Entries are being accepted at BroadwayCares.org through 2 PM ET October 20. Winners will be able to claim up to two tickets within an hour of being notified. All lottery seats will be in the theatre’s boxes.
The concert is also set to stream live worldwide (except in the U.K.), with those tickets available for $30 at BroadwayCares.org. Streaming sales are being matched up to $525,600 thanks to a gift from the Gates Foundation.
As previously announced, the one-night-only performance will reunite original cast members Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, and Fredi Walker-Browne, along with ensemblists Yassmin Alers, Gilles Chiasson, Shelley Dickinson, David Driver, Darius de Haas, and Rodney Hicks. The performance will also feature a number of Rent alumni, including Natalie Venetia Belcon, Adam Chanler-Berat, Nicholas Christopher, Merle Dandridge, Trey Ellett, Jordan Fisher, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jose Llana, John Eric Parker, Jai Rodriguez, Antonique Smith, Ephraim Sykes, and Aaron Tveit. Michael Greif is again directing after staging the original production.
Original music supervisor Tim Weil will lead the band, which will include fellow original pit members Kenny Brescia, Jeff Potter, and Daniel A. Weiss, joined by newcomer Steve Gelfand.
Originally premiering at Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop before transferring to Broadway’s Nederlander in 1996, Rent was that rare show that transcends mere Broadway success to become a cultural touchstone, changing the industry and truly permeating the mainstream zeitgeist—essentially the Hamilton of its time. The show is most noted for bringing ’90s-style rock music to Broadway, giving a modern spin to Puccini’s classic opera La Bohéme—but with electric guitars subbing for woodwinds and AIDS taking the place of tuberculosis.
And making the show’s creation even more extraordinary was the sudden and tragic death of composer Jonathan Larson, the night before the largely undiscovered talent’s musical was scheduled to give the first preview performance at NYTW. The loss—from an aortic dissection thought to be the result of undiagnosed Marfan syndrome at the age of 35—ended a career that was only just beginning, made all the more tragic when Rent went on to the history-making mega-success that it was. The show made stars of much of its incredible original cast.
The Broadway run would ultimately continue for 12 years and 5,123 performances, closing September 7, 2008. Along with a Broadway cast album certified two-times multi-platinum (meaning sales exceeding 2,000,000 units), the musical has spawned countless regional and international stagings, a big screen movie adaptation featuring most of the original stage cast, and a live TV production.
Broadway Cares is producing the upcoming concert alongside Baseline Theatrical founder Andy Jones. The performance has been licensed via Music Theatre International. The live stream is being produced in collaboration with The League of Live Stream Theater.
Streaming tickets are at BroadwayCares.org.