INTERVIEW: Adam Kantor is on a mission to share his love of ‘Rent’
Photo: Adam Kantor, an alum of Rent on Broadway, is a guest artist this summer with the Long Island Musical Theatre Festival. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by LIMTF with permission.
Accomplished theater actor Adam Kantor, who recently starred in the Geffen Playhouse production of The Inheritance, made his Broadway debut at a most auspicious time. Fifteen years ago, he portrayed Mark Cohen in the final cast of Rent on Broadway, and the lessons he learned in the Jonathan Larson musical have never left him. Today, as an in-demand actor, he continues to spread to his love of Rent by interacting with students who are learning the musical material. This month, for example, he joins the Long Island Musical Theatre Festival as a guest artist where he’ll offer a master class on Larson’s work, which also includes Tick, Tick … BOOM!
“I was a senior in college when I was cast,” Kantor said in a recent phone interview about his introduction to the Rent family. “I grew up on Long Island, in Great Neck, and I would take the Long Island Railroad into the city to see Rent when I was in high school because I loved it. I saw it many times and a bunch of different casts. I would wait at the stage door afterward. It was one of the first shows I did rush tickets, so I could afford to see it. If I couldn’t get in, I would wait outside and listen because it was loud enough that I wanted to hear it, so I grew up a real fan of the show. And for it to be my professional debut was beyond a dream come true.”
The Long Island festival reached out to Kantor inquiring about his interest in joining the company as a guest artist. When he realized two strong parts of his past were now coming together — both Rent and Long Island — he was an immediate yes. “I happily said yes,” he said. “Essentially it means I’ll be leading a master class with students around acting the song, which is something I love to do while I’m performing. … I’ve been a coach for the Jimmy Awards, the national high school musical theater awards, for the past 10 years, and I really love working with young performers, especially on acting the song, really treating the song as monologue and getting under the text, really investigating the text as monologue. So that’s what we’ll be doing.”
The result of the students’ work will be a concert production of Tick, Tick … BOOM! and a full production of Rent (both of these opportunities are for the advanced students), and there’s also be a staged production of Fame (for the intermediate level).
“I know for me how important my teachers were, my mentors, and how I wouldn’t be where I am without them, and I would love to think that I could have that kind of effect on a young performer myself,” said Kantor, who has also performed in The Band’s Visit and Fiddler on the Roof. “I see it as this beautiful chain, or links in that chain, and I think it’s that spirit of passing it on and mentorship and of apprenticeship that I just think is so beautiful in what we do. I want to honor that. I want to honor the people that gave to me and allowed me to flourish because it takes a village, I think. It can be parental support. It can be community support. It can be inspirations that we watch and glean from, and of course the teachers and mentors that we have along the way. So it’s an honor to feel like I can be part of that narrative for somebody.”
The lessons that Kantor learned while he was in Rent 15 years ago have stayed with him. Over the intervening years, he has experienced many student productions, amateur productions and community theater productions of the beloved show, and he reported being moved each and every time he took a seat in the audience to hear Larson’s work.
“I always find it’s a show that is so accessible because Larson wrote deeply human characters, and especially for young people,” Kantor said. “Most of the characters are relatively young, so often when you’re seeing a student production of it, the ages are not that far off. … I think there’s something about the show that speaks to community, and it forges these indelible bonds between the people who do it.”
He added: “The cast becomes a family. It just happens. It’s the nature of this thing, and we like to feel in the Broadway alumni community that if you’ve done Rent anywhere, you’re part of the family. And so even beyond the mentorship thing, I love to engage with casts of this show in particular because it feels like you’re meeting and welcoming in new family members. There’s something about this generation in particular of young people doing this show — the, dare I say, the post-COVID generation, folks who have been through this pandemic and really know what loss means and know what trauma means firsthand — that allows them to access the worlds of these characters in a very visceral and immediate way. The other day I stepped in on a rehearsal for Rent Aspen in New York, and I was so moved, not only because the cast was incredibly talented but just hearing these words and this music again now for the first time since going through the past few years of the pandemic, it just hit home in a really deep way. I’m excited to revisit the material again with this particular group of people.”
Performing Rent right now, in 2023, seems extra special because, although Larson’s work has received many devotees over the years, there are some school districts that have pulled the musical from their programming. Apparently the bohemian life is too much for some minds.
“This show is about community,” Kantor stressed. “I’m looking at a poster right now on the wall of me in the final cast, and it says, ‘Measure your life in love.’ The thing that the show preaches, these principles of ‘no day but today’ and that the most important thing is to take care of those around you, your loved ones, your chosen family, that is so important now. It’s ridiculous to think that a production of Rent could be shut down for ultimately those values, and when it comes to acceptance, when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, this is a show that celebrates the individuality of who you are and all you are and all the complexities. And it was known on Broadway especially as always being diverse, and it’s just an explosion of identity celebration. It’s also a show that says screw those who won’t accept us, and so it’s a little bit of a rebellion as well. It’s a fight back, so I think it’s even more important to harness that spirit of rebellion when society might be saying we don’t accept you, or we don’t accept this, or don’t accept the ideals that this show might celebrate. It makes it even more important to find a way to do it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Adam Kantor will be the guest artist at the Long Island Musical Theatre Festival. Click here for more information.
