SYNOPSIS
Based on the Puccini opera La Boheme, RENT chronicles the lives of eight individuals who live in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The characters represent people from varying status backgrounds, including an aspiring filmmaker, a former rock star who abandoned the drug-induced lifestyle, a businessman, and a lawyer. The filmmaker, Mark, narrates the story and begins the tale on Christmas Eve. The entire plot occurs during the course of a single year, and the eight characters experience friendship, love, anger, and loss. Four of the eight key players actually have HIV: Roger, Mimi, Collins, and Angel. They even attend Life Support meetings, group meetings with others who have the disease, to help cope with their fate. Ironically these four pair off as couples and find love in each other. Roger, who had once been involved with drugs and rock 'n' roll, but he left the drugs behind and focused on his music once again. Roger sees much of himself in Mimi, which draws him to her. Mimi works as an exotic dancer in a gentleman's club. She does so to earn enough money for her apartment and her drug habit. Collins, a teacher at NYU who was fired from MIT for his controversial theories, finds love in the form of Angel, a homosexual male who finds comfort in women's clothing and plays percussive music on street corners. Angel first runs into Collins after the latter had been beaten on the street for his coat. The two find solace in each other and the knowledge that they both share the same condition. The cast also features a lesbian couple: Joanne, a hard-working lawyer who attended an ivy league school, and her dramatic girlfriend, Maureen, who aspires to be an actress. Maureen also happens to be the ex-girlfriend of the narrator, Mark, who is still in love with her. The final character to round out the octet is Benny, a former friend to the group who has sold them out after his marriage into a wealthy family. When Benny threatens to tear down their apartment complex, the other characters join together to put a stop to these actions. Along the way, they endure various struggles within their group, some outside their control. Mimi and Roger break up after an argument; Maureen and Joanne break up after the former flirts with another girl. Just when it seemed as though nothing could be any worse, Angel dies from the disease that plagued him. The funeral, which should have been a peaceful, mournful day of reflection, became a huge fight among the group which causes them all to part ways. Eventually, when Mimi, filled with grief, takes to living on the streets, the group puts all else aside to find her. She nearly dies from pneumonia, but she gets a second chance at life, ending the tale on a lighter note.

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