In Making Rent, the musical director recounts shaping the show from its early days through the untimely death of creator Jonathan Larson and beyond.

Why write this book now?

I’ve thought about that often. Part of it is that up until the pandemic, I was working full-time. The pandemic came and literally my career shut down for two years solid. Because I was away from the day-to-day grind of doing what I do in this business, my perspective was complete. I had enough distance.

How did you pull together your memories of the production?

First, I took out a bunch of legal pads and started writing. I sat at the table and just vomited up legal pads full of single spaced scribbling. Once that was all out there, I slowly started to shape the chronology. The book was way, way long when it started. It’s kind of like the way you make theater. Rent was gigantic—it was three hours and 10 minutes long. And then slowly, you start whittling away, getting to the essentials. I’ve found the processes not too different—the language in Rent, for me, was melody and harmony, and here the language is, obviously, pesky English.

What made the show so influential?

I think at the end of the day, it’s the message of living each day to its fullest, especially in the context of Jonathan passing away. He was doing exactly that for the last years of his life. But also, I think Rent is a great show about those universal values of tight communities that go through the good and the bad times together. We all form communities, whether it be just a one-on-one relationship or your small friend group. I think that cohesion, and how it holds up under any number of circumstances, and continues to remake and re-find and ultimately value itself, is a lot of what resonates.

Did you have a favorite memory to revisit in writing the memoir?

Everything about it is my favorite to revisit. I think that’s because everything about it was positive, unique. We didn’t know that Rent was going to be what it turned out to be, but we all came together to put up a good show. Life was imitating art. It was a show about this community of young people in the most dire of circumstances. And there we were, a community of professionals, in the most dire of circumstances with Jonathan’s passing. We just showed up. We did it every day, and everybody did it to the best of their ability.