Chocolate Factory Productions' ANTHONY RAPP - WITHOUT YOU Opens in Boston, 6/19

Chocolate Factory Productions present a production of Anthony Rapp -WITHOUT YOU, based on Anthony Rapp's bestseller Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent, beginning performances in Boston today, June 19th. The show, which is directed by Steve Maler, will continue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August and London's Menier Chocolate Factory until Septemeber 15.

In 1994 Anthony Rapp was working at a New York Starbucks and about to audition for a new musical by a young guy named Jonathan Larson. This is where Without You begins. Rapp shares his audition for Rent, getting cast, rehearsals, and his view from the stage during the tribute performance on the night after Jonathan’s tragic death. Without You also details Anthony’s achingly beauti ful relationship with his mother during this turbulent time. Featuring Anthony’s own lyrics and melodies, stories adapted from his memoir, and the landmark songs of Rent, Without You is a valentine to the groundbreaking musical and celebrates all of our seasons of love.

Rapp’s memoir Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (Simon & Schuster, 2006)—about his struggle to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family during his mother’s battle with cancer—was a New York Times bestseller and is currently in its sixth paperback printing (and had nine hardcover printings).

Anthony Rapp has been acting and singing professionally since he was nine years old. He is best known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Rent, for which he shared an OBIE Award with the rest of the cast. He reprised his role in Chris Columbus’s film version opposite other members of the original cast. Rapp recently visited the role once more with original cast member Adam Pascal in a national tour of the show. His Broadway credits include the revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. His Broadway debut was in Precious Sons with Judith Ivey and Ed Harris, for which he received an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Des k nomination. His most recent stage appearance was in Second Stage Theatre’s Some Americans Abroad. Film credits include Adventures in Babysitting, School Ties, Dazed and Confused, Six Degrees of Separation, Man of the Century, David Searching, Road Trip, and A Beautiful Mind (SAG Award nomination for ensemble). He has also appeared in Winter Passing, a film written and directed by his brother, Adam Rapp. On television, Rapp has appeared in “The Lazarus Man,” “The X-Files,” “The Beach Boys: An American Family,” “Kidnapped” and “Law & Order: SVU.” In 2000, he released h is debut album, Look Around. He has performed his music in clubs and at colleges throughout the country.

Steven Maler is a freelance theater, opera and film director and the founding Artistic Director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC), which annually presents free productions of Shakespeare on the Boston Common.

The set design for Without You is by David Korins; lighting design is by Justin Townsend; sound design is by Gareth Owen; musical direction is by Dan Weiss; additional arrangements are by Tom Kitt. Without You is produced by Chocolate Factory Productions in association with Royal Family Productions.

More Articles by This Author...