Rent

Act One

It is Christmas Eve in 1987. Mark Cohen, an aspiring filmmaker and the show’s narrator, is setting up his camera in his sparse East Village loft apartment. He turns his camera on his roommate Roger Davis, a former junkie and songwriter and trying (unsuccessfully) to write a new song ("Tune Up #1"). Mark’s mother calls; they screen the call, and she leaves a message saying how sorry she is to hear about Mark’s ex-girlfriend Maureen Johnson, who left him for a woman ("Voicemail #1"). In the meantime, the pair’s friend Tom Collins, a gay college professor and activist, is coming to visit them, but as he stands downstairs at a payphone to let them know he has arrives, he is violently mugged. Another call comes in, this time from Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III; a former friend and roommate, Benny married into a wealthy family and moved out, but now owns the apartment building in which the pair lives. He also owns the lot next door, from which he