A School Version of 'Rent' Will Be Staged at Ridge High School

Auditions for Ridge High School dramatists resumed this week for the production of the student version of the musical "Rent," which last week was called off due to concerns about its themes of drug use, AIDS and homosexuality.

Ridge students were in the midst of auditions late last week when the school administration announced on Friday, Dec. 17, that the production would be halted, said Megan Kern, drama teacher and drama club adviser. Drama Club officers had been informed of the superintendent's decision the night before, Kern said.

Kern said she believed the administration had received an e-mail blast of objections to the play, which premiered on Broadway in the mid-1990s.

But other members of the public and also students then responded with a call for the show's return. "The show will go on," Superintendent Valerie Goger announced on Monday night. 

"We received a lot of correspondence objecting to the mature theme of the show," Goger said at the Board of Education meeting. "I canceled the show. That led to more correspondence."

Goger said she had been persuaded to reverse the show's cancellation due to an impassioned defense of the play, written by the late Jonathan Larson. She said students were especially eloquent in stressing the play's anti-bullying message and stated goal of practicing tolerance.

Goger said she also compared  a published school edition of the play with the original script for "Rent," produced on Broadway and in a movie version.

"The Broadway version is different from the school version," Kern said on Wednesday. A version of the script was rewritten for school audiences following Larson's death in 1996 the night before his play opened.
 
The student version was presented through Music Theater International, and the differences are outlined on MTI's website, Kern noted. The student version particularly tones down obscene language and sexual content in the adult version of the script, she said.

Kern said she had chosen the play for this year's musical following a December trip to New York City to see Puccini's opera, "La Boheme." "They loved the opera," Kern said of her students. "We have a very mature, intelligent group of students."

In class, the students compared the similar sub-plots and characters in "La Boheme" and "Rent" and even a piece of music taken directly from the opera, Kern said.

The controversy over the play delayed auditions for a few days, but Kern said that roles likely will be cast when students return from winter vacation. "I know we are going to have an incredible show," she said. 

Not everyone is convinced that "Rent" is the right choice for a high school musical, however.

"I think it's a very poor choice," Board of Education member Michael Byrne said on Monday. He said he views the "controversial" and "avant garde"  play as an attempt to force changes on a community such as Basking Ridge. Byrne noted the play stresses drug use and poor conduct by its main characters.

"It shows no self constraint of the people involved," Byrne said. 

The students who supported the play, however, had a different view. Ridge High School senior Susanna Vogel said the superintendent had originally supported the production of "Rent." But later, she said, the superintendent told students that with the creation of Ridge's new Performing Arts Center the community increasingly had called for more programs to be appropriate for all audiences including younger children and senior residents.

Vogel said the superintendent's stated concerns about the play's "mature themes," including thievery, coping with HIV/AIDs, drug use and homosexual and trans-gendered relationships aren't based on the reality of the script.

"Even if the material is in the play, is it any worse than eighth grade required reading 'A House on Mango Street,' which deals with domestic abuse and rape, or seventh grade novel 'Whirligig,' which discusses  attempted suicide and drunk driving?" Vogel asked in an e-mail. Vogel quoted drama club president Emily Cleary as saying that "Rent" sends the message that the characters are making their lives better after bad decisions.

Vogel said that the "elephant in the living room" is that there are two homosexual couples in "Rent," and challenged that as the basis for pulling support for the play.

"In the true spirit of "Rent," students and confused parents refuse to allow the show to be canceled without a fight," Vogel wrote.

Later, however, Vogel wrote that the administration had "kindly" reversed its decision to cancel the play.

Kern said that as director she can handle the presentation of the play in a way that might make it more "palatable" to the show's critics. She said the show does not promote drug use any more than it does homelessness, and it simply encourages acceptance of  "people who might not be like you."