Diversionary Theatre isn’t known for shying away from extreme logistical hurdles in its 40th anniversary season. Its last play, one of the first commissioned pieces from the theater in several years, culminated in a rainy deluge on stage — always a risk if water gets anywhere it shouldn’t.
Then came the 30th anniversary revival of “Rent,” the biggest show the theater has ever done.
For the production, a cast of ten uses the entire building for an ambitious effort, combining live filming of actors, live musical accompaniment and an audience moving between upstairs and downstairs stages. One actor even had to get a special license in order to drive a motorcycle through the administrative offices behind the theater.
As much as the shock-and-awe factor might play a part, it’s also clear theater leaders were deeply thoughtful in approaching how they wanted to revive the musical.
“Rent” changed the face of musical theater forever, using Jonathan Larson’s contemporary rock score to depict the authentic lives of marginalized communities, and adding never-before-seen diversity to the stage in the process. As co-director Sherri Eden Barber shared, her 16-year-old, theater-loving self seeing Idina Menzel kiss a Black lesbian lawyer on stage was monumental.
But “Rent” was written in the ‘90s, and so it has seen plenty of justified criticism, too. In addition to the limiting ways it discusses bisexual and gender nonconforming people, the show’s main characters are two straight men and its central romance is heterosexual — in a show about the AIDS crisis.
To subvert these criticisms and reimagine its heterosexual focus, the LGBTQ+ theater had a solution: cast transgender actors. It was important enough to find a trans Roger that the theater went far afield, hiring New York City-based Gio Coppola to play the depressed songwriter.
Maya Sofia Enciso, left, as Mimi and Gio Coppola as Roger queered the heterosexual romance at the heart of “Rent” by casting a trans man as Roger. (Photo by Xing Photo Studio/Diversionary Theatre)Local donors housed him and other out-of-town actors, as several social issues central to the musical, like housing affordability, funding cuts for the arts and crackdowns on homelessness, are just as relevant today as when Jonathan Larson wrote the musical. Whether New York City’s or San Diego’s East Village, whether it’s 1990 or 2026, the struggles of being an artist in the city remain the same.
Similarly, in “La bohème,” the Puccini opera upon which the musical is loosely based, its characters navigate art and love amid marginalization, poverty, and pandemics — but in early 19th-century Paris.
The small but mighty Diversionary leveraged every resource and connection it had to make the show happen. Community choirs making appearances at shows, Lambda Archives displaying the AIDS quilt, and local AIDS service providers filling preview shows with HIV+ patients are just some of the ways the wider community has gotten involved.
The theater’s corporate sponsor, Vista-based Show Imaging, was consequential in getting the eight large screens on stage that livestream aspiring filmmaker Mark’s (played by Jonathan Sangster) lens on his friends protesting, living without heat, and celebrating the holidays.
The 2005 film version of “Rent” was many people’s first introduction to the material, and sometimes their first introduction to queerness, as in the case of the person I attended with. Diversionary’s filmmaking elements blend the movie and theater experience together, and further make narrator Mark the vessel for his friend group’s story.
The screens did not divorce the show from its humanity, instead making it a singularly immersive experience as close-ups on actor’s faces evoked a great deal of emotion that may not have otherwise been visible from the distance of a stage.
The cast sings “La Vie Bohème” on a table in the downstairs Clark Cabaret during the second act of “Rent.” (Photo by Xing Photo Studio/Diversionary Theatre)The performance also involves the audience. Maureen’s (Michael Amira Temple) performance piece protesting the closure of a performance space where Mark, Roger and Mimi (Maya Sofia Enciso) live involves getting a volunteer to drink from the udder of a robot cow in Cyber Land and urging the entire audience, crowded onto the theater’s patio, to moo. Then, the cast moves to the downstairs Clark Cabaret bar for the diner scene “la Vie Bohème.” (Clark Cabaret’s beloved bar manager Derrol Murphy has a cameo as the group’s waiter.)
Afterwards, the audience is rushed back upstairs for the rest of the show, although the actors, accompanied by a video camera, still have scenes in other parts of the building projected onto the screens.
Andre Heimos plays anarchist computer teacher Tom Collins in “Rent.” (Photo by Xing Photo Studio/Diversionary Theatre)The rest of the cast is made up of Andre Heimos as an expressive Tom Collins, Allen Lucky Weaver as a vivacious Angel, Nio Russell as a tough Joanne, David McBean as a selfish Benny, and an ensemble of Faith Carrion and Adeleida Martinez in comedic, threatening and serious roles.
This is a show where the production team might have even more going on than the actors. Kudos to Shannon Humiston for managing a stage that covered an entire building as well as co-directors Coleman Ray Clark and Barber for reimagining “Rent,” alongside production dramaturg Jesse Marchese.
Choreographer Nigel Semaj was also effective in storytelling through movement. Mathys Herbert on scenic design, Annelise Schultz-Salazar on lighting, Claire Peterson on costumes, Kevin Angenhill on sound design, Nick Hussong on projection design, and Anthony Garcia on props deserve shout-outs as well. Jerrica Stone directed the music, which even included a band in one room while actors in two separate locations flawlessly harmonized.
The next three weeks of performances are mostly sold out, but to find tickets or join the waitlist, visit diversionary.org.
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