'Rent' Is Coming Back To New York In A Uniquely Reimagined Form

More than 28 years ― or 14,716,800 minutes ― after it first premiered on Broadway, “Rent” is returning to the New York stage in a uniquely reimagined form.

Next week, Lincoln Center will host a one-night staging of the musical, performed by a full cast of deaf performers from the New York theater group Deaf Broadway using American Sign Language.

HuffPost has a sneak peek of the April 1 production of “Rent,” which can be viewed below. In it, the Deaf Broadway cast, which includes “Only Murders in the Building” actor James Caverly in the lead role of Mark Cohen, performs the musical’s signature showstopper, “Seasons of Love.”

The “Seasons of Love” video is directed by Jules Dameron and Skyler Knutzen.

When “Rent” premiered on Broadway in 1996, it redefined the status quo for musical theater. Composer Jonathan Larson gave Giacomo Puccini’s opera, “La Bohème,” a provocative, forward-thinking update by transplanting the action from Paris to New York City and setting it against the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Sadly, Larson himself never got to witness the success of “Rent.” He died on Jan. 25, 1996, at age 35, one day before “Rent” had its off-Broadway premiere. The show went on to become an era-defining smash, running for a staggering 5,123 performances and winning several Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Many members of the original cast, including actors Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp, continue to enjoy impressive stage and screen careers.

Garrett Zuercher, who is Deaf Broadway’s artistic director, caught his first performance of “Rent” in 1998, when he was a student at Marquette University in Milwaukee. As a young gay man who also happened to be deaf, he found himself “so engrossed and enthralled” by the show’s