Rent the School Edition

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January 24, 2013
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Our school is contemplating proposing RENT: TSE for our fall musical. We have roughly 2,500 students in medium size city in Wisconsin. We are looking to find other schools who have produced RENT as a means to address questions we may have. We have strong student support for the show, but we are mindful of the community reaction. Here are some questions that we have;1) What rationale did you use in the proposal of RENT?2) Did you have issues with males or females playing the roles of: Angel, Collins, Maureen?3) If you produced the show, did you receive any backlash from teh community, or were they pretty supportive?Any recommendations or personal antidotes about your production will be helpful for us in making our decision. Our plan is to overview the perusal, and then we would like to talk to some of the schools that produce the show before pitching the show to our administration. If we receive teh go ahead, we will have a student and parent meeting to talk about why we are doing the show.
3 Answers

February 4, 2013
Joe, Can I get some information on your school? How large is it? What was some of the feedback that you received from your administration about the show? If approved, we are planning to have a meeting for parents to really talk about why we are doing the show, and how we are going to handle the show and the scenes. Where is your school located?

February 4, 2013
This was for a community theater (NJ) - so a tad different than a school. But was associated with our Education Department. The parents, except for one, all understood the show and knew what ot expect from it. There was only one parent who was not happy with the two times her daughter had to kiss. So my advise would be to make sure parents know your direction ahead of time. We had about 20 kids in the show - again, this was a 24 hour musical so they only had 1 day to prepare and perform the show, but the quality was that of a full 6 week rehearsal period.

February 3, 2013
Hello! We just did RENT: SE as a 24 hour musical challenge with students from 16-22. It was a HUGE success! The community was supportive, my only suggestion would be to have a parent meeting and let the parent's know your direction. Example the mom of our Mimi was not happy with the kissing scenes. You might want to mention some 'questionable' direction with your parents and make sure they will allow their kids to be a part of that scene.