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Lonnie Walker performs at the Pour House Music Hall
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By Josh Green, NBC17
When you are an actor and you sing a song what could seem like 525,600 times, little moments that happen in places like Durham are the things that can stick with you.
“It looked to me that there was a young mother and, probably, her 7-year-old daughter in the front row last night,” Rent star Anthony Rapp said smiling. “The little girl was looking right up to me and singing along to every word of ‘Seasons of Love’ and that was really sweet.”
“Rentheads” know the names Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal. By week’s end, thousands more will here in the Triangle. The two stars are now back in the traveling version of the Broadway show. The iconic musical drew devoted fans to New York’s Nederlander Theatre for years. A version of the show hit the big screen in 2005.
“Even though the movie was not — by any means — a big hit at the box office, it’s had a good life on DVD and on cable,” Rapp said. “Even when you’re not a huge hit at the box office, you’re still seen by millions of people. It would take — in New York at the Nederlander Theatre where it played — two years of being sold out of every performance for one million people to see it.”
Life is different on the road. Rapp does yoga whenever he can. Pascal hits hotel gyms to try to get cardio and weight training in during this hectic schedule. Both bring water bottles with them to keep hydrated.
“I have a wife and kids so it’s difficult to leave them back home,” Pascal said. “But I’m actually enjoying being out here. The physicality of the show is very demanding, and to perform the show at the level we’re expected to perform it … we have to exercise, we have to eat the right kinds of food. We have to take care of our bodies. It’s not like a touring rock band.”
You can sense that the two feed off each other’s energy, especially on-stage.
“It was always a package deal,” Pascal said. “Neither one of us wanted to do it without the other one,”
The production is taking the cast around the country — in Tempe, Ariz. one week; Minneapolis, Minn. the next.
“Because a show lives and breathes in the ensemble and the energy that happens between the actors and the audience, we’re blessed with an incredible group of people where we’re all there for each other,” Rapp said.
Both said the movie version of the Broadway musical opened up a new generation of Rent fans.
“The film version really helps tell a particular story — not just the story of the show,” Rapp said. “But it also tells a story of part of the history of [the] AIDS crisis. I think that young people have grown up with AIDS being a part of their life, but they don’t always know all of the truth of what it was like at a certain time.”
“One of the things I’m proud of — in the film in particular being seen by young people — that it can bring them to the theatre. That’s really exciting: to encourage them to seek out a live production. I think the truest and purest expression of the piece is the theatrical version.”
Pascal said that’s one of the reasons Rent still hits home.
“You hear about what people went through. It’s almost like when I see stuff about Vietnam … to, in a way, experience what it felt like for people who actually went through it,” Pascal said.
Rent plays through Sunday at the Durham Performing Arts Center.
“There’s so much in this show about love and life and the questions that you can ask yourself about what is it that we’re here for,” Rapp said. “One of the questions I think the show asks is given that we don’t know how much time we’re going to be here, what are you going to do with the time you have.”
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