For Cimarron grad, ‘Rent’ is Justin time

Marilyn LaRocque

Friday, April 19, 2002 | 10:24 a.m.

What: Rent.

When: Tuesday through April 27.

Where: Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Tickets: $35, $55, $75.

Information: (702) 785-5000.

When the award-winning musical "Rent" comes to the Aladdin Theatre of the Performing Arts Tuesday for a six-day run, local musician-actor Justin Rodriquez will be playing one of the lead roles, transvestite Angel Schunard.

Rodriguez left Las Vegas in 2000, a year after graduating from Cimarron-Memorial High School. He and four of his buddies were hoping for an R&B recording career in New York City. It didn't happen. The group disbanded, but Rodriquez stayed on in Manhattan.

Smart move.

Rodriquez's stage experience in high school was minimal, roles in "Pajama Game" and "The Wizard of Oz." However, when he saw an ad for auditions for the national touring company of "Rent" in a casting-call newspaper, he went.

"It was my first audition," Rodriquez said. "The competition was insane. I was there two hours early and was 42nd on the list. It was very scary with all these professionals around me, and there I was in jeans and boots."

Rodriquez, a high tenor, sang the oldie "At Last." He was asked to come back for the "movement" (dancing) auditions two days later.

"I was so nervous," he recalled, "Because dancing is not my thing. The choreographer led us through the steps, and I was, like, clueless and had a hard time following along.

"They kept cutting people out but telling me to stay. It was the longest day of my life, but I got the part."

"Rent" spans a year, from Christmas Eve 1995 to Christmas Eve 1996, in the lives of eight people Rodriquez describes as, "artists coping with everyday realities while trying to pursue their dreams. Paying the rent is a real, as well as symbolic, issue for them."

"Rent" was inspired by Puccini's opera "La Boheme" and has some similar plot lines and details, and some identical names and character types. It also has a Bohemian setting, the East Village of New York City. However, the situations are strictly contemporary -- drug use, homosexuality, HIV, support groups, the homeless, protests, riots, voice mail and beepers that remind those with HIV to take their AZT.

The late Jonathan Larson wrote the book, music and lyrics of "Rent." Tim Weil did musical direction. Choreography is by Marlies Yearby; set design, Paul Clay; costume design, Angela Wendt; lighting design, Blake Burba.

The original New York production premiered off-Broadway on Feb. 13, 1996, at New York Theatre Workshop. It opened on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre two months later. It swept all the major theater awards that year, including four Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book (Larson), Best Score (also Larson), and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It also received six Drama Desk Awards and three Obie Awards, as well as many others. Regretably, Larson died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm about three weeks before the show premiered.

In addition to Angel, the main characters are: Benny, the landlord of an apartment house, who is trying to squeeze out tenants so he can bulldoze the building and erect a huge cyber arts studio; straight roomates Mark, a filmaker and the show's narrator, and Roger, a musician and composer; Mimi, an exotic dancer and drug addict who becomes Roger's girlfriend; a lesbian couple, Maureen, a performance artist and Joanne, a public interest lawyer; and Tom Collins, a computer-age philosopher and Angel's lover. Angel, Roger, Mimi and Collins are HIV-positive.

"Angel is a street musician, so it worked out cool for me," Rodriquez explained.

"He spends a lot of time drumming on a plastic bucket he always has with him, like a security blanket or a buddy. He's also a part-time drag queen, so I'm in and out of drag throughout the show.

"Angel isn't ashamed of who he is or that he is HIV positive. He represents joy and love and wants people to be happy, to live every day to the fullest."

Rodriquez is featured in three solo songs. However, he describes his voice training as "sporadic."

"I worked at Jack in the Box and Banana Republic at the Forum Shops," he explained. "And whenever I got enough money rounded up, I took a voice lesson."

The national company of "Rent" has been touring since September, starting in Charleston, S.C., and playing cities such as Nashville, Washington, D.C., Boston and Atlanta. The tour ends in San Diego in August. Rodriquez will then return home to Las Vegas for a few weeks before starting next season's tour in September in Philadelphia.

"I love being on the road," Rodriquez said. "It's awesome seeing places I've never been to and meeting cool people. Staying in one place too long makes me itchy."