NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – “How do you measure a year in a life?” It’s just as profound a question today as when it was first asked in Jonathan Larson’s musical phenomenon “Rent” nearly 30 years ago. While the lyric was always meant to be rhetorical, original cast member Anthony Rapp has finally arrived at an answer.
Just last month, the 51 year-old actor and singer returned to his roots, and now stars in a one-man show called “Without You” at New World Stages.
Although “Rent” was adapted from Giacomo Pucchini’s “La Bohème,” and offered a behind the scenes look at the life of impoverished artists trying to get by in New York City during the AIDS crisis, Rapp’s “Without You” is a musical look back at the beginning of his career and a giant love letter to the two most important people in his life: his mom and Larson.
Now, when Rapp began writing the memoir that the show is based on nearly 20 years ago, not once did the idea of adapting the book as a musical ever cross his mind. As he tells 1010 WINS in an exclusive interview, it wasn’t until a presenter at one of his many concert gigs casually suggested the idea to him that he could not stop thinking about it. Still, he had no idea how it would work.
“Words on a page live in the reader's imagination [and] words on a stage have to fill the space,” he said, acknowledging the challenges of reframing his story. Taking inspiration from shows such as “Passing Strange” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” Rapp eventually found a way to make it work. One that would not only prove to be unique for his story, but one that he also felt he could only tell it through.
The “musical memoir,” as he calls it, is a meditation on two events that happened simultaneously at a time of his life where he was most vulnerable. “I was cast in this new, unknown off Broadway musical called ‘Rent’ that turned out to be a massive success,” he explained. “At the same time [my mom’s] cancer recurred.”
Because the music from “Rent” was the soundtrack to his life back then, Rapp recontextualizes many of the songs to help tell his story now. He believes his selections work so well with his show because they align with some of the same themes Larson’s show explored.
“There’s a lot of ‘Rent’ that deals with loss and living in the face of loss,” he says, while explaining that “Without You” is simply an exploration of how to move on. “It's not to say that you have to shove your head in the sand, and look away from the sadness or pain of the loss…it's about opening yourself up to the whole experience of it, that you can embrace it and be with it and still live fully.”
Eight times a week, Rapp willingly spends 90 minutes re-enacting his past and pain while singing, dancing, and rearranging an entire stage set by himself - all in an attempt to prove to a group of strangers that life goes on.
“Right before my mom died, he reveals, “I was really having a really rough time, and [an old friend] told me the phrase, ‘The only way out is through.’ I know that that might seem cliché, but if you really think about it, when we're going through a rough thing, the last thing people want to do is go through it. They want to push it away, they want to look away. If there's anything that my show can help people to think about is that you can make it through these things. My being up in front of you is, I hope, kind of living proof of that.”
If the show isn’t enough proof of Rapp’s resilience, a look back at the last year of his life certainly is.
One year ago, Rapp recalls that he had just finished filming for Star Trek: Discovery and was trying to get “pregnant” for the first time with his husband. Plans for the show were up in the air. And he was awaiting the next steps in his civil lawsuit against Kevin Spacey. It was both “a very quiet private time” coupled with “a lot of anticipation,” he says.
The jury’s verdict, his son’s birth, and the show’s opening would eventually happen back to back to back. While only the latter two had positive outcomes, Rapp made it clear that he feels blessed as ever.
“I feel incredibly grateful,” he says. “It was a very long process to get through the trial, it was a very long process to get to the arrival of Rai and it was a very long process to get to this show. All of these things have come to a full circle point.”
With such humble gratitude, it almost seemed as if Rapp was extending the “You” in the show’s title to the audience - because without it he might not have bounced back so gracefully. He says, “To have made it through all of that, and for the show to have been received and arrived with such beautiful open arms and a loving response from so many people, it's been really uplifting.”
So, how does one measure a year in a life? By Rapp’s account, it’s not about what you’ve done with the life you’ve already lived, but how you plan to use your remaining days to honor the ones who are no longer living.
When asked about what’s one of the biggest things he’s learned in retelling his story at this point in his life, all the actor could talk about was his newborn son and the similarities he’s now discovering between himself and his late mother. “The feeling of protectiveness, the feeling of desire to have a really open relationship, and to be here as fully as possible for him…I feel like I get her guidance,” he says.
Rapp revealed that he felt a similar sense of “guidance” from Larson. He says that the same way Larson wrote “Rent” to honor his friends, he hopes to honor both Larson and his mom. He believes that, “By telling the stories of the people who are gone, they can, in a way, continue to live.”
Through those stories, we can all learn to live more joyfully too.
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