So, sometimes things blow up on Twitter in a big way. It was a sleepy Friday afternoon when personal finance blogger Chelsea Fagan tweeted out this:
the other day a bartender told me his high school did a performance of RENT where they couldn’t say AIDS so all the characters had diabetes
— Chelsea Fagan (@Chelsea_Fagan) October 6, 2017
For those who weren’t theater geeks in the nineties, RENT was a story of slumming twentysomethings trying to keep a roof over their heads in New York City during the height of the AIDS crisis. AIDS was a central part of the story, which was set during a time when the HIV virus (which causes AIDS) was considered a very short death sentence for anyone who contracted it. So try to imagine how much changing the chronic condition of the script would change the play.
apparently the characters took “insulin breaks”
— Chelsea Fagan (@Chelsea_Fagan) October 6, 2017
At first glance, such a story seems too absurd to be true, especially since it was a story told at a bar, where true statements can be as rare as non-alcoholic drinks. But then a slew of others shared their bizarre stories of changes made to musicals for high school productions.
we did a sanitized FAME script where the gay kid instead had no testicles bc cancer. But all-girls school. So,
— Casey S Pumpkins (@Ela_Hadrun) October 7, 2017
I worked at a theatre camp where the (almost entirely white) kids were determined to do Hairspray, so teacher made it about height not race.
— Kit Lovelace (@kitlovelace) October 6, 2017
At my Christian high school, Rizzo had laringitis instead of premarital pregnancy in our Version of Grease.
— schmetterling (@RanchCommie) October 7, 2017
Others began to envision the changes that would be needed in such a script. If you are familiar with the original show, you might get these references:
🎤 my body provides a comfortable hooome
for Diabetes mellitus high blood sugar syndrome 🎤— 🎃 rachel slime 🎃 (@rachsyme) October 6, 2017
“Excuse me if I’m off track. But if you’re so wise. Then tell me, why do you need snacks?”
— Zechariah Harvey (@ZechHarvey) October 6, 2017
Someone even photoshopped Wilford Brimley, considered a living diabetes meme for his ads for Liberty Medical, into the RENT cast:
It’s a little known fact that Wilford Brimley was in the original cast of RENT. #TheMoreYouKnow #Diabeetus pic.twitter.com/dAqn85Pmua
— Andrew Steger (@acsteger) October 6, 2017
And a few others rightly pointed out how such a change perpetuates myths about Type 1 diabetes and does a disservice to those who died during the dark days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.
Am I the only one who doesn’t find this funny? Guess I’m just too sensitive about friends that died, to lol at a bastardized RENT
— James Haddan (@JamesHaddan) October 7, 2017
It was quite a discussion, but the question remains of whether this production actually happened. We reached out to Chelsea Fagan to ask for help in tracking down this bartender. While she’s acknowledged a BroadwayWorld article about this tweet in a separate tweet, she has yet to reply to our query.
We also pinged Music Theatre International, which manages the licensing rights for RENT. Jason Cocovinis, Music Theatre International’s marketing director, responded with this emailed statement:
“We read the article in BroadwayWorld as well, but we do not have a record of this actually happening. It’s a copyright violation for any organization to change the author’s work, so hopefully this instance, whether true or not, can spark a discussion about properly using intellectual property.
As an aside, I’m also a Type-1 diabetic so I found the story both amusing and disturbing. Conflating diabetes and HIV/AIDS is inaccurate, and so would be altering the musical’s content, so this example whether true or not is wrong on many levels.”
If anyone has any more information about this mythical production of RENT, or if you have witnessed another example of a play inserting diabetes to sidestep another medical condition, please email me at cidlebrook@selfrx.com. As Cocovinis said in his statement, hopefully the fuss over this rumored production will cause others to think twice about editing in diabetes into another play.
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