The livestream of Rent, the 30th Anniversary Concert will open an hour early, backstage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, with Troy Iwata and Jay Armstrong Johnson as hosts and Ricki Lake working the red carpet.
The pre-show starts at 7pm Eastern on Monday, October 26, and runs for an hour before the concert itself begins at 8pm. Iwata and Johnson currently star Off-Broadway in Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody. Lake, the actor and talk-show host, takes the arrivals, catching the company on the way in.
The plan is backstage access and archive footage from the musical’s 30 years, then a second visit at intermission, when the two hosts come back with interviews from the cast. That material is for the stream only; nobody in the house sees it.
The house itself has been sold out for weeks. The stream is how everyone else watches, and it stays up until 11pm Eastern on Tuesday, October 27, pre-show included. Proceeds go to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and the Gates Foundation is matching the money from every livestream ticket up to $525,600. The stream is produced with The League of Live Stream Theater.
On stage, Michael Greif directs the full show again, three decades after he staged it first. Original company members Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Taye Diggs and Fredi Walker-Browne head a line-up that has since grown to take in later additions including Neil Patrick Harris and Rachel Zegler.
Livestream tickets are on sale from Broadway Cares.
