Learn all about Jonathan Larson, the award-winning writer of 'Rent' and more

The cast and creative team of The Jonathan Larson Project, a new musical dedicated to his lesser-known work, gives a crash course in his life, sound, and legacy.

Gillian RussoFebruary 18, 2025, 05:00

If you're a Broadway fan, you know the name Jonathan Larson. But if you're not and you don't, you'd be forgiven. The writer had a fairly short career in the late '80s and '90s, cut short by his sudden death at 35, by which time he only got two musicals staged in NYC.

One of those, however, was the rock musical Rent, which won multiple awards and became one of the defining Broadway shows of the '90s. That show cemented his posthumous legacy, which has also drawn renewed attention to his other major musical, tick, tick... BOOM!, in recent years. But it's been nearly 30 years since a new Larson work emerged — until now.

Larson authored numerous other songs and shows that went unproduced in his lifetime. Conceiver Jennifer Ashley Tepper has fashioned them into The Jonathan Larson Project, which began as a 2018 concert and is now a fully staged musical revue featuring 20 mostly unheard songs.

"It's just been really satisfying as a performer to learn about his process," said Lauren Marcus, one of five actors in The Jonathan Larson Project. "Not just the works we know, but also how he thought, what he thought about art, what he thought about music, and the whole world outside of what we think we know about him."

If you only know his work on Rent or know nothing about Larson at all, trust the cast and creative team when they say his work is wide-ranging, timeless, timely, and joyous. Get to know Larson with the fast facts below, and check out his work for yourself at The Jonathan Larson Project off Broadway.

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Larson lived and worked in downtown Manhattan.

After graduating from Adelphi University on Long Island with an acting degree, Larson moved to the city and ultimately lived in an aparment at 508 Greenwich St. in Manhattan's West Village. He also frequented — and set Rent in — the nearby East Village, which gradually overtook its western counterpart as the scrappier, more bohemian arts hub.

It's apt that The Jonathan Larson Project plays at the East Village's Orpheum Theatre, and many of Larson's old haunts in the Villages are within walking distance. "The Ear Inn, which has been a bar since 1817, was right around the corner from Jonathan Larson's apartment," Tepper named as an example. "The couple of prominent interviews he did in his lifetime were done there."

Other spots of interest include the renowned Public Theater off Broadway, where Larson did a workshop of his unproduced dystopian musical Superbia, and the nearby nightclub Fez, where Larson would go for drinks afterward. (Fez closed in 2005, but the site is now home to the popular French restaurant Lafayette.)

Larson was a struggling artist in New York City.

The Jonathan Larson Project doesn't have a traditional plot, but it does have a story: Five artists, each of whom reflects some element of Larson, gather in a bar to share their work with each other.

Said Adam Chanler-Berat of his character, for example, "He's a writer, and he's really struggling with [...] what it means to be an artist when the world is falling apart around you, and how to not close off to the world [and] stay in community with people."

Larson, similarly, was working in the New York of the '80s and '90s, when the Theatre District was seedy and AIDS was devastating Larson's community. And right up until Rent got picked up, he struggled to get his work produced.

"Jonathan made a budget for himself," said Chanler-Berat, who had viewed videos and emails from early in Larson's career. "Apparently, he would write out, like, 'If I work this shift and this shift, I would make this much money, and then I could buy this many boxes of pasta.

'He was really trying to survive and to get his break, and he was so close to it," the actor continued. "It's both heartbreaking and also, it feels like you can relate to that person. He's not some musical theatre luminary. He was just like the rest of us who are just trying to get by."

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Rent changed the landscape of musical theatre.

When Rent finally made its world premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in 1996, before transferring to Broadway later that year, it was an instant success. The show, a loose adaptation of the opera La bohème set in Larson's New York, tackles various sociopolitical topics and was one of Broadway's first rock musicals.

The pioneering subject matter and style hooked a new set of audiences on theatre. Actor Andy Mientus, who now self-describes as "the biggest Larson-head" among his castmates, is one of them.

"Jonathan's work really resonates for me. In the early days, when I was young, it was because it was exciting, it was rock and roll, and I was way more into that than I was into, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein," he recalled. "And when I was [a] young queer person, getting to see that on stage meant a lot to me."

"He advocates for himself, but also for the marginalized people, his friends that were around him," echoed his castmate Taylor Iman Jones. Thus, by way of the 20 songs in The Jonathan Larson Project, the revue tackles an equally sprawling array of hot topics.

"We get into community, we get into politics, we get into fighting for the earth, and we get into fake news. We get into literally using love, using community, to heal, to make the world a better place, even if it's for yourself, even it's within your home. We get into heartbreak. We get into drama," said Jones.

"It just feels amazing to be a part of something that is continuing to create safe spaces for anybody and everybody."

Larson wrote in all kinds of musical styles.

Though Larson is best known for marrying rock with musical theatre, those are far from the only genres he explored. His full archive of songs includes decades' worth of musical influences.

"Some of our songs kind of sound like sea shanties. Some of them sound like really typical [...] theatre rock. Some of them sound like Sondheim songs," actor Jason Tam said, referencing the late Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway's most renowned composers and a mentor to Larson.

Added Marcus, "There's even pop songs that he wrote for Whitney Houston!"

That's a perk for audiences, who are likely find at least one tune that matches their music taste, and the performers, who bring various vocal styles to The Jonathan Larson Project.

"I get to sing this insane song called 'Hosing the Furniture' in the show, and I didn't know how much he loved it," Marcus said. (The tune was written for an unproduced revue inspired by the 1939 World's Fair.) "He often referred to it as one of his favorite songs he ever wrote [...] I didn't know that the first time I learned and sang it.

"I'm not a person who I thought had the Jonathan Larson sound, the rock sound, but I didn't know he wrote stuff for sopranos."

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The Library of Congress preserved Larson's archives.

All his records were donated to the institution in 2003, including piles of handwritten notes, typed scripts, and even floppy disks. When Tepper went to view them, her findings planted the seeds for The Jonathan Larson Project.

"I thought there might be, like, 20 songs," Tepper recalled. "I had no idea there would be hundreds!"

What makes Larson's oeuvre so culturally significant? According to director John Simpkins, Larson probed both the highs or lows of the experiences he wrote about.

"He invites the good, the bad, and the ugly of our humanity and also offers a powerful message of hope at the end of a dose of reality, whether that be about politics or love or loss," Simpkins said. "In the middle of that is this beautiful way forward to retain or rejuvenate your optimism. I don't know who wouldn't want to hear that message in 2025."

"There is an earnestness to what he writes, a real heart that is rare nowadays," echoed Mientus. "Now [...] everything has to be done with a wink and cynicism, and Jonathan was not cynical."

Larson lives on through the impact of his work.

Larson died suddenly of an aortic dissection the day before Rent played its first full-fledged performance off Broadway. He wasn't around to see the three Tony Awards or the Pulitzer Prize Rent won, or the successful film adaptations of both Rent (2005, starring six original Broadway cast members) and tick, tick... BOOM! (2021, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Nor did Larson know his work would go on to have a lasting impact on both existing theatre fans and those yet unfamiliar with the art form — but that's what The Jonathan Larson Project company hopes to share.

"As a tourist from Ohio, I walked in to see Rent, and I sat down, and 10 minutes after the curtain went up, it was one of those experiences where I just thought the entire show was speaking only to me," Simpkins remembered. "He was groundbreaking, and this is now 35 years later, and he is still breaking ground."