During the 1990s, as AIDS continued to affect communities, American theatre became a powerful tool to talk about illness and its impact on communities. Some musicals, like Rent and Angels in America, helped inform and raise awareness among the public about what the AIDS epidemic was like. These shows didn’t just mention disease but told stories of love, loss, and strength.  The musicals showed characters with AIDS as real people, helping break down fear and stigma around illness. Rent and Angels in America encouraged audiences to care more, act, and push for better healthcare and support. These performances helped create memories that were connected to the past for those who didn’t live in the early years of the epidemic. These musicals showed that theatre wasn’t just entertainment, it was a way to raise awareness and inspire change. 

          Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent was used as a powerful tool to address ongoing social issues. Rent was also used to educate communities about the effects of AIDS and other illnesses on the public. One way they did this was by making humanizing characters with diseases and giving them a voice. Characters such as Mimi, Roger, Tom, and Angel are examples of such characters. These characters weren’t judged for their illness; they were artists, lovers, and friends. Rent used these characters to break down stereotypes and fear surrounding illnesses. The musical helps people understand community, chosen family, showing up for support, and overcoming hardships. Anthony Rapp, one of the cast members, reflects, “Rent was about celebrating life in the face of death.”  (Pacheco, Patrick. “Life, Death and ‘Rent.” Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 1996) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-14-ca-58265-story.html Through music, emotions, and storytelling, Rent gave a voice to ignored communities and helped influence public understanding of AIDS by making it more personal and real.

          The musical Rent, by Jonathan Larson, had a profound impact on how young people in New York City struggled with poverty, housing issues, and the pursuit of their dreams. The musical Rent portrays characters who are unable to pay rent, yet still care for others and remain hopeful. Many of their challenges, such as money, unstable housing, and working multiple jobs to stay afloat, relate to how many people feel today. According to writer Ben Brantley, Rent captured “a generation’s anxiety about survival and purpose” during the 1990s. (Brantley, Ben. “Rent: The Awakening of a Generation.” The New York Times, 30 Jan. 1996.) Ben Brantley explains that Rent wasn’t just about illness; it was about fighting to hold onto identity, creativity, and forming a community. Through their songs, they show how friendship and chosen family can help people through financial stress and uncertainty. This musical focuses on survival, hope, and self-expression and shows how Rent continues to connect audiences with different backgrounds.  

          Musical theatre also helped play an important role in representing the LGBTQ+ community. At the time, many shows did not include or outright avoided these topics, but Rent included gay, lesbian, and transgender characters as part of everyday life. Rent didn’t portray stereotypes, but rather depicted people who were friends, artists, and individuals living their lives. This helped audiences see the LGBTQ+ community with more understanding and care. As this article explains, Rent stood out because it showed “The normalcy with the musical approaches LGBTQ+ characters and giving them space to be fully human.” (Payne, Allison. “Rent: Humanizing the LGBTQ+ Community.” Hidden Heritage Collections, 2020) By doing this, Rent helped break down fear and stigma, making people feel more seen and represented. It added to its message about love, support, and fighting through tough times.

          Musicals like Rent and Angels in America help give a voice to communities facing illness, poverty, and discrimination.  These shows did more than entertain the people. They helped audiences understand AIDS and the daily struggles people faced. In Rent, Jonathan Larson created characters who weren’t defined by their illness but by their love, work, and relationships.  This helped break down the fear surrounding people with illnesses and AIDS. It showed people as part of the community and worthy of compassion. As Anothony Rapp explained, “The musical was about celebrating life in the face of death.” (Pacheco, Patrick. “Life, Death and ‘Rent.’” Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 1996.) Critics also noted that Rent helps capture the anxiety of a generation trying to survive while valuing things such as creativity and identity. (Brantley, Ben. “Rent: The Awakening of a Generation.” The New York Times, 30 Jan. 1996.) By including LGBTQ+ characters as fully human and everyday people, Rent challenged stereotypes and made audiences more understanding. Together, these musicals help inspire empathy and push for social change by turning stories of hardship into stories of hope.

          Tom Kushner’s Angels in America also played a major role in influencing audiences about AIDS and the LGBTQ+ community. Unlike Jonathan Larson’s Rent, which used music and youthful energy, Angels in America was a dramatic play that confronted politics, religion, and identity during the AIDS crisis. It showed characters like Prior Walter, who struggles with illness but also becomes a symbol of resilience. The play highlighted how AIDS was not just a medical issue but a social and political issue. Such as exposing the government’s neglect and prejudice against communities.  As scholar David Savran explains, “Angels in America transformed the AIDS epidemic into a national allegory that forces audiences to see the crisis as a part of America’s history and conscience. (Savran, David. The Playwright’s Voice: American Dramatists on Memory, Writing and the Politics of Culture. Theatre Communications Group, 1999.) By combining personal stories with larger themes of justice and community, Kushner’s Angels in America helped audiences understand that the fight against AIDS was also a fight for human dignity.

Angels in America didn’t just talk about illness; it explored themes of politics and identity, making the AIDS crisis part of a larger more national issue Tony Kushner used the character Prior Walter to show both suffering and resilience of people living with AIDS. He connected his story to questions about justice and hope for the future. The play did not shy away from showing government neglect and prejudice, reminding audiences that the epidemic was shaped by social and political factors, just as much as by medicine.  As critic John Lahr noted, “Kushner’s work gave shape to the inchoate fears and rage of a generation.” (Lahr, John. “Angels in America.” The New Yorker, 4 Jan. 1993.) By blending personal stories with a broader cultural issue, Angels in America helped audiences see that the AIDS crisis is not only a tragedy but as a call to empathy, activism, and change.

          Overall, Rent and Angels in America showed how theatre can be a powerful tool to talk about illness, identity, and community. These works gave audiences a chance to see people living with AIDS as humans, friends, artists, and lovers. It showed these people with hopes and struggles, like the everyday person. Jonathan Larson’s Rent used music and emotion to highlight love and survival, while Tony Kushner’s Angels in America confronted politics and justice, making the epidemic part of America’s larger story.  Together, these plays inspired social change and turned hardships into stories of resilience and hope. These plays continue to show how art can help communities to remember, heal, and take action.

1. Larson, Jonathan. Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2008.

This book contains the lyrics and songs from the musical Rent, written by Jonathan Larson. It shows what each characters sing and says throughout the musical. It explains how the play serves as a lesson about love, friendship, and perseverance during difficult times. This book helps you understand how each character felt during Rent and their emotions. I feel like this book is great if you want to learn about the musical Rent and the interactions between the characters.

2. Rapp, Anthony. Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

The writer of this book was one of the actors in the musical Rent, Anthony Rapp. This book talks about Anthony’s time during the show and his friendship with Johnathan Larson. He talks about how sad it was when Johnathan Larson, the writer of the Musical, passed away before the musical’s opening. This book shows how much Rent meant to the people who worked on it and how it was so impactful to people. Anthony helped readers see a more personal side of Rent by sharing his feelings and memories.

3. Schulman, Sarah. Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. Duke University Press, 1998.

This book talks about Rent’s gay community and the effects of AIDS on the community. It mentions how Rent spread awareness about these issues to the public. Schulman thinks Rent wanted to bring attention to real-world struggles and made it easier for larger audiences to understand. This book explains how Rent used music and theater to talk about real-world problems, for example, AIDS and sexuality.

4. Gioia, Michael. “The Creation of Rent – How Jonathan Larson Transformed an Idea into a Groundbreaking Musical.” Playbill, 5 Feb. 2016.

This article explains Jonathan Larson’s inspiration for Rent and how he made it into a musical. He talks about how to turn old opera into a story about young adults in New York City. This article shows how hard Larson was working on this project and how much he believed in it. It also talks about how Rent changed Broadway into something more modern. I think this article is a good source to learn about Rent’s origin and why it is so special.


5. Holladay, Meredith. “Rent (Play).” Research Starters: Drama, EBSCOhost, 2022.

This source gives a summary of the musical Rent and its main ideas, such as love, friendship, illness, and loss. The writer Holladay explains why Rent is so popular and how it spread awareness to real-world problems. The summary gives a clear image of Rent’s story and makes it easy to understand. This source is helpful if you want to learn what makes Rent important and why people still talk about it.

The article ‘Mexican Cave Holds Secrets of the Maya Collapse’ introduces compelling new evidence indicating that prolonged droughts substantially contributed to the decline of the Classic Maya civilization. The study’s significance lies in its rigorous methodology, where scientists analyzed a stalagmite from a cave in Mexico to reconstruct past precipitation patterns during the era of Maya decline. By measuring the ratios of oxygen isotopes preserved in the stalagmite, researchers obtained high-resolution seasonal records of rainfall from 871 to 1021 CE. This methodological approach is particularly valuable because it provides direct paleoclimatic data corresponding to the specific period when the Maya experienced profound social and political upheaval. Such precise environmental reconstructions enable scholars to better correlate climatic shifts with historical events, thereby elucidating the broader context of the civilization’s collapse.

The article is aimed at students and anyone interested in history, archaeology, or science. It straightforwardly explains the science, yet provides sufficient detail to demonstrate how the evidence supports its ideas. The primary information is derived from the chemical markers in the stalagmite, which indicate when droughts occurred and how long they lasted. The study found eight wet-season droughts that lasted at least three years, and one that lasted an incredible 13 years. These droughts happened at the same time Maya cities stopped building monuments and recording important dates. This change had a big effect on their ability to farm and keep power. Even though the Maya had advanced water systems, they could not survive such long dry periods. This made me think about how vulnerable civilizations are when the environment changes.

Several questions arise from this study, including how Maya communities attempted to adapt to recurrent droughts and whether certain regions exhibited greater resilience due to differing environmental or technological conditions. For example, urban centers with larger or more sophisticated water-management infrastructure might have been better equipped to withstand prolonged dry periods. Furthermore, the relationship between climatic stress and other contributing factors, such as inter-polity warfare or disruptions in trade networks, warrants further investigation; drought could have exacerbated existing social or political tensions, accelerating societal decline. Overall, this research highlights the productive intersection of scientific and historical inquiry, while also inviting reflection on the ways in which contemporary societies may similarly be affected by ongoing climate change.

Source Text: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250814094654.htm

            The person I chose for this archival paper is Jonathan Larson.  I was first introduced to this composer in my FIQWIS class when reviewing the musical Rent. While we were discussing Rent, I was hooked. The musical Rent, by J. Larson, interested me the most it was inspired by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Rent is not just about artists living in New York but about love and loss, sickness and hope, and what it means to hang through struggles. I had to stop and think about how people really deal with things like disease, poverty, and not just in the theoretical sense. 

After thinking about Larson, I keep going back to him because his story is similar to my studies. I am a biology major, and this encourages me to learn what diseases are and how they operate, and their effects on people. But with Larson, it goes beyond that. He sees in his own way what disease does to the lives of individuals and how it affects their lives and friendships, and what they think of it as a society. This is what Rent is about, it deals with the total fear stigma, and the kindness, not to say charity, that is shown to individuals by others in the neighborhood when the undergrounds begin to fall apart. 

Rent is also related to what I study in my sociology class. The sociology of health, health in the community, the community, and the class of individuals in it, social class, etc. These are things that we have started to discuss in detail. In Rent, you see these characters fighting against the dreadful disease of poverty, trying to cope with the health problem, and being put into a position, not of choice, but of dislocation, when it occurs. These were the threads that Larson wove into his work of art. He tries to show that disease is not only a chemical or medical phenomenon but that it has to do with individual lives and the systems surrounding them. It is educational, if you will, to see how biology and sociology come together, even in a musical. 

What makes it even more interesting is the personal history of Larson. He spent years working at Rent while attending to his various other duties, his various occupations, and was rejected time after time for his work. The fact that he died just before the first performance of the show is, of course, a tragic one. He never had the opportunity of realizing how well his work went over and how well it has been received later, and no doubt is bound to be, but the idea of Rent remains alive, and of course, the recognized values of the work of Larson are perfectly evident at present, as well as being inspirational to us all to a great extent, telling us, however, to watch those eternal verities that are crying and coming to us as one of the values of this particular work.  

Jonathan Larson connects to my interests in science and society through storytelling. He took the struggle of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and turned Rent into a story about love and resilience. Learning about him and his creative process has helped me realize that art doesn’t just reflect the world; it can inspire people to care more about one another.

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