By Emilie Duggan

Collegian Staff

On Feb. 13, 1996, one of the most successful shows to hit a Broadway stage premiered at the New York Theater Workshop, but the man who created “RENT” never got to see his dream become a sensation.

According to the “RENT” Web site, Jonathan Larson watched the final dress rehearsal, did an interview with a reporter from The New York Times, went home and died on the floor of his kitchen, where his roommate found him a few hours later. On Jan. 25, 1996 – just 10 days before his 36th birthday – Larson died of an aortic aneurysm.

Just a week prior, Larson collapsed during rehearsal and asked for an ambulance. Ironically, the cast was rehearsing the song “What You Own,” which Larson wrote about living and dying in America at the end of the millennium. The Web site says Larson “later told friends that he could not believe the last burst of music he would hear might be his own song about dying.”

Larson lived the bohemian life he wrote of in “RENT,” but his life was far from difficult. From the time he graduated college until his death, Larson lived in New York City, 30 minutes from the suburb of White Plains where he grew up. Though his upbringing was comfortable, with his loft apartment, illegal wood-burning stove, serving job and dancer girlfriend, Larson could have easily been one of his characters.

Larson attended Adelphi University on a full theater scholarship, a testament to the talent he was well known for in his town. His high school, not having a program in musical theater when Larson started, created one for him, so that he would not be without an outlet. It was in college that he truly shined, and in his senior year, he wrote a letter to Stephen Sondheim, one of the most famous writers on Broadway, looking for a mentor. Shortly before his graduation, Sondheim contacted Larson, and they struck up a friendship. It was Sondheim that would eventually encourage Larson to focus solely on writing music.

“There are more starving actors in New York than there are starving composers,” was Sondheim’s advice to his prot