This spring, lights, sets, and rehearsals at Francis W. Parker will all combine to create the spring production of Rent. Rent, the Pulitzer Prize winning rock opera that reshaped American theater in the 1990s, is set to run on the Parker stage March 11–14. While many schools wait until January to begin the creative process, Parker’s theater department has already launched months of intensive preparation. The reason, according to the production team, is as clear as it is ambitious: this show demands not only technical rigor, but deep emotional, historical and ethical understanding from .
For Dr. Caleb Goh, Parker’s Upper School drama teacher and the musical’s director, the decision to take on Rent came from the weight of the show’s message. “It’s an important story,” Goh said. “It’s a story about LGBTQ representation, about a community searching for meaning in the middle of crisis, and about an epidemic that tore people’s lives apart. I want that story to be told in a compassionate, humane, humorous, edgy and exciting manner.”
That intention serves as the heartbeat of the entire production, which aims to educate not only its cast and crew but the entire Parker community. And while excitement around the announcement has spread quickly, the behind the scenes work, historical learning, informed character study, script revisions, and intense artistic risk-taking, is only beginning.
The significance of staging Rent in 2025, is rooted in the legacy behind it. Jonathan Larson’s Rent, first performed off-Broadway in 1996, follows a group of young artists struggling to survive in New York’s East Village at the height of a devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic. Loosely adapted from Puccini’s La Bohème, the rock musical blends the real stories with raw emotional storytelling. Larson, who died suddenly the night before the show’s first public performance, embedded the narrative with portraits of the friends he had lost to AIDS and homelessness.
On Broadway, Rent became a cultural force. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Musical and ran for 12 years, earning more than $280 million. It brought queer life center stage not as subtext but as narrative power. It put bohemian poverty, addiction, chronic illness and chosen family into the mainstream media. And, it gave a generation of young people their first exposure to activism through art.
For Parker’s production team, that activist lineage is part of what makes the show so urgent, especially for students who may not fully grasp the history of the AIDS crisis.
Goh has found that many within today’s teen generation don’t know the scale of loss the epidemic created. “The generation above mine has told me they don’t have friends their age anymore,” he said. “Entire communities were wiped out. I want people to understand that this was catastrophic. It was different from COVID, different in scope, different in the stigma, different in how it was handled. But there are similarities, and those similarities make it teachable.”
Music director and Upper School Music Teacher Christian Jackson, who will lead the vocal and musical interpretation of the score, echoed the importance of that historical grounding. “We just had our first production meeting, and Dr. Goh gave us this incredibly comprehensive look at what life in that era was like,” Jackson said. “Understanding the 1990s, understanding the communities affected, it completely changes how you teach these characters. You start to realize what the stakes really were.”
Jackson admitted that Rent had never been one of his personal favorites “the rock vibe hasn’t always been my thing,” he said, but the depth of the research, along with Goh’s vision, shifted his perspective. “Working with someone as detailed and focused as Dr. Goh has made me excited to try something new,” he said. “It’s encouraging that the adults are also stepping out of their comfort zones. That’s the kind of risk-taking we want students to feel brave enough to embrace.”
One of the biggest questions surrounding any high school production of Rent is how its mature content will be handled. Topics such as drug use, sex work, queer identity, chronic illness and death are central to the plot. Goh is determined not to sanitize the story into something unrecognizable, but also to approach it with care, historical accuracy and respect for the school setting.
The production will use the Rent: School Edition script, adapted with cooperation from the Larson estate. The school edition removes the explicit “Contact” sequence, slightly adjusts and softens certain lyrics, and mirrors the film version for the scene of Angel’s passing.
Goh explained how these changes still maintain the show’s emotional power. “Some words have been changed, and drug usage is lessened,” he said. “The mention of Mimi’s job is not erased, but the wording is a little different. But it still has the same type of impact without triggering the wider community.”
More importantly, the adjustments allow students to explore the characters from a deeper lens. “It’s not about what Mimi does,” Goh said. “It’s about why she does it, and how she survives in a world that looks at her and says, ‘We don’t want people like you.’ I want performers to understand her humanity, her trauma, and her longing to feel seen.”
That philosophy extends to many of the show’s most complex roles, including Angel, a character often debated in discussions of queer representation. Goh clarified that in Larson’s original writing, Angel is not a transgender character but a drag performer, something he hopes to portray with nuance rather than impose a contemporary framework on. “Angel is written as male-identifying but performing in drag,” he said. “It’s performance art, think RuPaul’s Drag Race in its early days. Beautiful, flamboyant, expressive. I don’t want to strong-arm the story into something it wasn’t written to be. I want to honor the intent.”
Part of preparing students for such roles requires emotionally intelligent, historically rooted guidance. Goh and Jackson plan to educate performers through research, discussions and immersion in the culture of late-1980s New York. Goh is even working on bringing in a special guest with firsthand experience from the era.
Both directors emphasize that this preparation is why rehearsals and research are beginning as early as November. “The performers, the cast, the crew, everyone has to understand the world of the show,” Goh said. “We all have to live and breathe this world together.”
Beyond internal learning, the team plans to extend that educational mission to the broader community. There will be MX discussion on the show’s themes, and the production is working toward adding an audience talkback for one of the performances. The idea, Goh said, is for students to articulate what it felt like to embody these characters that are dealing with such difficult life circumstances, and for audiences to learn about real world history.
Due to the themes in the show, it is not yet decided whether middle school students will attend, but Goh hopes younger students will have access with parental guidance. “We always place trigger warnings,” he said. “I would love for younger audiences to see it so that the educational value can be shared beyond just those 15 and older.”
Students involved are already feeling the weight and excitement of that responsibility. Sophomore performer Uriel Castañeda expressed enthusiasm not only for the artistic challenge but the opportunity to honor the real lives behind the characters.
“There are certain characters I think I could perform in a way that shows all the respect I can for them,” Castañeda said. “People go for these roles to show their stories in the most authentic way possible. And that’s amazing.”
Jackson agrees that the cast’s talent, and their willingness to leap into discomfort, will be the foundation of the production. “Students are incredibly talented,” he said. “The work they’re doing in choir, the fall play, dance class, is making me really excited to see what happens when we put all our heads together. We’re all taking risks. And when that many people take risks together, magic happens.”
For Goh, the ultimate goal remains simple. “I hope the audience and performers take away that we are telling stories about real human conditions,” he said. “People who struggled with things beyond their control. People who still deserved to be seen as human beings. People who deserved a place in this world. That’s what Rent should do.”
As Parker’s theater department steps into months of early preparation, the intent behind this choice in the musical is already being broadcasted. According to Castañeda, “this musical is not just a performance. It is a lesson, and a tribute to that time. And by March, I hope that the entire community will be ready, not just to watch the performance, but to understand it.
