Many people face these problems every day, but there is still a taboo surrounding these issues.
"RENT" first came out in 1997 and my first viewing of it was in the fall of that year. Since it was a relatively new show, maybe a lot of the audience wasn't sure what to expect. The first show I attended in Palm Desert, about half of the audience got up and walked out in the middle of the first act. I sat in the theater watching the shocked and appalled faces of many elderly people as the production unfolded. They couldn't believe their eyes when two men walked in holding hands, one of them dressed in heels, short skirt, and a wig. Most of the people viewing the show were elderly, nicely dressed, and appeared to be wealthy. These people are part of the "passive older conservative majority" who have very different value systems and expect a musical to be happy and showy, while "RENT" really is not (Negus, p 14). The issues in "RENT" are common societal issues, but there are not usually theatrical productions based on them. Due to the controversial content, "RENT" was not well accepted by the general theater-going public in Palm Desert. While the underlying themes of love and living life to the fullest every day are common themes in productions, transvestites, on-stage drug deals, and poverty are not very common in musical theater. .
The second time I saw "RENT" was in downtown Los Angeles in 1998. By this time, the audience had most likely heard of the show and knew what it was all about when they bought tickets for it. The audience at this showing was much younger and more casually dressed. Some of the people were dressed in bohemian wear, similar to the characters. Everyone at this show seemed to enjoy the content, or could even relate to a problem the characters face. The audience in Los Angeles was part of what Negus calls "the young generation." This generation challenges the normal conventions of musical theater and "developed a "subculture" that combined new attitudes to sexual relationships" (Negus, 13).
