Jonathan Larson

This is Jonathan Larson's (author of RENT) autobiographical (and posthumously produced) tale of a young composer on the brink of turning 30 and falling into oblivion. His girlfriend wants to get married and move out of the city (TICK,), his best friend is making big bucks on Madison Avenue (TICK...), yet Jon is still waiting on tables and trying to write the great American musical (BOOM!). Containing fourteen songs, ten characters, three actors, and a band, tick, tick... BOOM! takes you on the playwright/composer's journey that led to the Broadway blockbuster, RENT.

The three actors playing the leading roles in Northern State University Theatre’s production of tick, tick…BOOM! are Cory Niles as composer Jonathan, Adam Karal Sahli as his best friend Michael and Shanon Patek as his girlfriend Susan. NSU’s Director of Theatre Daniel Yurgaitis directs and stages the production and Technical Director Larry Wild provides the set and light design. Music faculty members Raouf Zaidan and Robert Vodnoy will be Vocal and Music Directors respectively for tick…tick…BOOM! It will be stage managed by student Seth Honerman. The play will be performed onstage at the Johnson Fine Arts Center. Performances are scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, April 17-19, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $12.00, with discounts available for seniors and high school students. Tickets increase $2.00 at the door. Tickets go on sale Monday, April 7th in the NSU Bookstore. For additional information, call 626-2563. This musical contains adult language.

Cory Niles (L), Shanon Patek Adam Karal Sahli

Jonathan Larson
(February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996)
From an article by Amy Asch for American National Biography

Jonathan Larson was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in suburban White Plains. Both Jonathan's parents loved music and theatre, and show tunes and folk music were always playing in their home. Jon and his sister Julie took piano lessons during elementary school. He could play by ear, and his teacher encouraged him to experiment with rhythm, harmony, and setting words. In 1978, Jonathan entered the acting conservatory at Adelphi University with a four-year full-tuition merit scholarship. He earned his Equity card doing summer stock and received a BFA with honors in 1982.

After graduation, Jonathan moved to Manhattan, went on acting auditions, performed in a nightclub trio, and composed songs for a musical version of Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Books". In 1982 he adapted George Orwell's "1984" for the musical stage. Deeply affected by the novel, and unflappably confident, he completed book, music, and lyrics, recorded a demo tape, sent a script to director Harold Prince, and wrote to Orwell's estate. The theatrical rights were unfortunately not available. "So all the work that I had done on that transmogrified into SUPERBIA, which was my own dystopia."

Moondance Diner

In the earliest drafts of SUPERBIA, a young man with a music box wants to wake up an emotionally numb futuristic society. In later drafts, the hero never gets a chance to make his point. This shift seems to echo Jonathan’s own experience with mounting a new musical. During the SUPERBIA years, 1985-1991, Larson was chosen for ASCAP and Dramatist Guild development workshops. He lived on the edge of poverty, preferring to work as a waiter in the Moondance Diner rather than divide his concentration with jingle- or copywriting. Organized and disciplined, he revised draft after draft of SUPERBIA and submitted material to scores of regional theatres. In 1988 he won a $14,766 Richard Rodgers Development Grant, which funded a staged reading of SUPERBIA at Playwrights Horizons. But all of Jonathan's talent, devotion, connections, and persistence could not secure a full-scale production of the show.

Jon addressed his disappointment in tick,tick...BOOM! (1990), an autobiographical rock monologue that was influenced by the work of Eric Bogosian and Spalding Gray. In the course of twelve songs and stories, he told half-funny, half-bitter tales of bad readings and waiting tables. His character worried about turning thirty, whether to give up writing musicals, and if his current girlfriend was "the one"; he learned that his best friend from childhood was HIV-positive. "tick" was deliberately easy to stage--"No sets, no costumes, no cast. Just me, a piano, and a band"--but Larson's hopes for a larger production or a record deal went unfulfilled. He did occasional downtown performances of the piece through 1994.

Program: Rent

In 1989, the playwright Billy Aronson asked Jonathan to collaborate on an update of "La Bohème": a show about would-be artists of the present day coping with poverty, disease, and heartache. Jonathan suggested the multilayered title RENT. They wrote three songs and amicably separated. In 1991, three more of Larson's friends were diagnosed HIV-positive, and he returned alone to the project, with Aronson's blessings.

He began the arduous dual development process again. While he did extensive research and tried out new material in friends' living rooms, he also applied for grants and looked for producers. In 1992, he approached New York Theatre Workshop, a downtown theatre specializing in new and avant-garde work. They expressed great interest in "RENT" and gave Jonathan an artistic home and rigorous feedback as he worked out the plot.

While developing RENT, Jonathan continued to create new works with other collaborators including BLOCKS (1993), a revue about teen issues, with lyrics by Broadway veteran Hal Hackady. With songwriter Bob Golden, he wrote the script and songs, directed, and produced a thirty-minute video for children called "Away We Go"(1994). J. P. Morgan Saves the Nation (1995) was a sardonic history lesson about capitalism. Playwright Jeffrey M. Jones wrote the piece specifically for outdoor performances in New York City's financial district. Jonathan set Jones’ lyrics to Sousa-style marches, grunge rock, and everything in between.

When he won a $45,000 Richard Rodgers grant for RENT in 1994, New York Theatre Workshop agreed to mount a "studio production". Following this workshop the show still needed focus, and Fall 1995 was a time of intense work with the project's director Michael Greif and the theatre’s Artistic Director, Jim Nicola; a time of passionate arguments about the show's shape and production timeline. With a small advance from the producers in his pocket, Jonathan quit his waiter job in October to work full-time on the show. Finally, just before Christmas, the show was cast and rehearsals began.

Rent at the Nederlander Theatre

Twice during "tech week," Jonathan went to hospital emergency rooms with severe chest pains but was released, diagnosed with food poisoning or the flu. Still feeling under the weather, he rested during the day and then attended the first and only full dress rehearsal for RENT on January 24, 1996. Anthony Tommasini, a music critic for the New York Times, attended, planning to mention RENT in an article about the centenary of "La Bohème". Impressed by the score, Tommasini interviewed Larson at length that night and told him that the work was something special.

A few hours later, alone in his apartment, Jonathan put on a kettle to make tea, and died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. It is believed that he died as a result of Marfan Syndrome.

After two weeks of previews, RENT opened on February 13, 1996 to rave reviews, and the original downtown run quickly sold out. A flood of publicity fueled the transfer of the show to Broadway, where it opened on April 29, 1996. The show was an explosion of energy, with all the lead performers wearing small headset microphones as in a rock concert. Teenagers camped on the sidewalk outside the Nederlander Theatre for precious $20 tickets and testified in Internet chat rooms about how the show had changed their lives. Characters who happened to be homosexuals, people of color, infected, or homeless became familiar to audiences in a way that statistics or strangers never could. The 1996 Democratic Convention concluded with a performance of the RENT song "Seasons of Love." Among other awards, the show and its author won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards.

The original "Jon," Raul Esparza

tick, tick...BOOM! was originally presented as a "rock monologue" entitled Boho Days and performed by composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson as an autobiographical look at his dream of leaving his mark on the musical theater landscape. Larson was working on Boho Days at about the same time he was writing the landmark musical RENT, though, of course, his tragic death meant that he did not live to see his dream become a reality.

Boho Days was first seen on September 6-9, 1990, at a workshop at Second Stage Theater. After that mounting, Larson continued to hone the piece and there were several different versions. Larson presented the piece at the Village Gate Theater in 1991, and again at the "O Solo Mio" festivals at the New York Theater Workshop in 1992 and 1993. At one point, the piece was called "30/90" in reference to Larson's reaching that momentous age in 1990, but eventually the title became tick, tick...BOOM!.

After Larson's untimely death, his college friend and producing partner Victoria Leacock became determined to bring tick, tick...BOOM! to a wider audience. She enlisted David Auburn, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning play Proof as a "script consultant." Auburn studied Larson's various drafts of the show and restructured the monologue into a three person show.

The Off-Broadway production of tick, tick...BOOM! began previews at the Jane Street Theater on May 23, 2001, and officially opened on June 13th. The show was directed by Scott Schwartz, and starred Raul Esparza as the aspiring composer Jon, Amy Spanger as his girlfriend Susan, and Jerry Dixon as best friend Michael. tick, tick...BOOM! was an instant hit with the legions of RENT fans, and went on to garner seven Drama Desk nominations and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, businesses and theaters in lower Manhattan struggled, and tick, tick...BOOM! ended its run on January 6, 2002, after 215 performances. However, the show has had a very healthy post New York life. In 2003, a national tour played several cities across the U.S., and in 2005, Neil Patrick Harris headlined the show in London.

Off-Broadway Poster

As far away as South Korea, tick, tick...BOOM!'s message of the rewards of following a dream seems to resonate. In that nation, three of their biggest pop singers starred in three simultaneous productions of the show.

Jonathan Larson’s dream was to infuse musical theatre with a contemporary, joyful urban vitality. After 12 years of struggle as a classic "starving artist," his dream came true with the phenomenal success of RENT. To celebrate his creative spirit and honor his memory, Jonathan's family and friends created the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to provide financial support and encouragement to a new generation of musical theatre composers, lyricists and bookwriters, as well as nonprofit theatre companies that develop and produce their work. It is one of the few places where individual creative theatre artists can turn for help.

Each year, the Foundation receives over 150 applications, which are carefully reviewed by readers, staff and trustees. The finalists are sent to a panel of noted theatre professionals to determine the final list of recipients and grant amounts. The awards are presented at a gala awards luncheon each February. Nancy Kassak Diekmann is the Executive Director

	Original Cast Recording: tick,tick...BOOM! Original Release Date: September 11, 2001 Number of Discs: 1 Label: RCA Victor Broadway ASIN: B00005NQK5
	Jonathan Sings Larson Audio CD, 2 disc set, released November 6, 2007 Label: P.S. CLASSICS ASIN: B000WDTO3O    Jonathan Sings Larson uses Larson's own demo recordings to reveal the range and gifts of a songwriter who was just fully realizing his potential at the time of his death. Besides familiar numbers from RENT and tick, tick...BOOM!, included are several songs that have not been widely heard, songs that further showcase Larson's gift for inventive melody, character and novel situation. Also included with it is a bonus DVD with four video tracks from his November 25, 1991 performance at New York’s Village Gate.
	Vocal Selections: tick, tick...BOOM! Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation, June 1, 2004 Language: English ISBN-10: 063404169X ISBN-13: 978-0634041693