Jonathan Larson was an American composer and playwright, who was exploring the social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia in his work.
Background
Larson was born on February 4, 1960 in White Plains, New York, United States, to Jewish parents, Allan and Nanette Larson. He was exposed to the performing arts, especially music and theatre, from an early age, as he played the trumpet, tuba, sang in his school's choir, and took formal piano lessons.
Education
Larson received his education at White Plains High School. After high school, Larson attended Adelphi University in Garden City, New York on an acting scholarship. During his studying he was performing in numerous plays at the university theatre. He graduated from it with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982.
Career
During his career, Jonathan Larson wrote a variety of early theatrical pieces, with varying degrees of success and production.
Among his early creative works is Sacrimmoralinority, his first musical which was co-written with David Glenn Armstrong, and originally staged at his alma mater Adelphi University in the winter of 1981.
In 1982, Larson moved to New York City. Because he had performed in summer stock productions, he was able to obtain his Actor's Equity card, and started going to auditions. Between 1983 and 1990, Larson wrote Superbia, originally intended as a futuristic rock retelling of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, though the Orwell estate denied him permission to adapt the novel itself.
In 1985 or 1986, he began working as a waiter in a restaurant called Moondance, located in New York City. He also earned money through freelance work, composing songs for the children's show Sesame Street.
Larson also continued to work on other projects, which satisfied his creative urge even if they did not "pay the rent." Among these were the musicals J. P. Morgan Saves the Nation and Superbia, as well as a rock monologue called Tick, Tick … Boom!, which Larson performed himself.
In 1992, Larson also collaborated with fellow composer/lyricists Rusty Magee, Bob Golden, Paul Scott Goodman and Jeremy Roberts on Sacred Cows, which was devised and pitched to television networks as a weekly anthology. The project was shelved due to scheduling conflicts among the five composers.
Since 1993 till his death, Larson was working on his most famous play, called Rent. It started as a staged reading in 1993 at the New York Theatre Workshop, followed by a studio production that played a three-week run a year later. However, the version that is now known worldwide, the result of a three-year-long collaborative and editing process between Larson and the producers and director, was not publicly performed before Larson's death.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Larson suffered an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome.