Photos and Video: Deaf Broadway's Sold-Out Rent at Lincoln Center

An American Sign Language staging of the late Jonathan Larson's Rent was presented at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre April 1 via Deaf Broadway. See snippets of the show in the video above, and check out photos from the evening in the gallery below.

Part of the American Songbook season, the Deaf Broadway performance featured a full cast of Deaf performers from Broadway and Hollywood performing excerpts from Larson's musical in ASL. This Rent was performed to the musical's original Broadway cast album and featured dynamic English captions. Music: Not Impossible, a wearable technology that translates sound onto the skin through vibration, was also available for audience members to wear.

The cast for the one-night event included James Caverly as Mark, John McGinty as Roger, Anjel Piñero as Mimi, Joey Antonio as Angel, Director of Artistic Sign Language Kailyn Aaron-Lozano as Joanne, Gabriel “Gab” Silva as Collins, Sandra Mae Frank as Maureen, Tyler James Fortson as Benny, and ensemble members Treshelle Edmond, Samuel Langshteyn, Malik Paris, and Heba Toulan. Garrett Zuercher directed.

Directed by Michael Greif, Rent opened at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre April 29, 1996, following previews that began April 16. The musical received 10 1996 Tony nominations, subsequently winning four, including Best Musical. Larson's work also won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. After 16 previews and 5,123 regular performances, the production played its final show September 7, 2008.

Set in Manhattan in the 1990s and inspired by Puccini’s opera La Bohème, the hit musical follows a group of young East Village artists, performers, and philosophers as they struggle through the hardships of poverty, societal discord, and the AIDS epidemic in the search for life, love, and art.

Deaf Broadway has previously presented Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods.

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