![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldRight here.
This said, I still plan to see Rent.
Sarah Schulman is a lesbian writer and social activist who noticed in 1996 that the musical Rent seemed to borrow characters and situations from her novel People in Trouble. In her 1998 book Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, Schulman lists the similarities between the two works, describes the process of confronting Rent author Jonathan Larson's estate, and explains why she didn't sue for copyright infringement.
[. . .]
I [published] a novel in 1990 called People in Trouble, which was based on a love relationship I had with a married woman in the East Village during the advent of the AIDS crisis. The gay part of Rent is basically the plot of my novel, but with a slight shift. [Larson] has the same triangle between the married couple and the woman's lover, but he made the straight man the protagonist, whereas in my version he was the secondary character. But there are scenes in Rent, and events in Rent, that come right out of my actual life, via the novel.
This said, I still plan to see Rent.
