Lin-Manuel Miranda has said repeatedly that Rent is the show that made him think he could write musicals: he saw it as a teenager, and it was the first time contemporary popular music and people who looked like his neighbourhood were on a Broadway stage. What carries over: sung-through construction with almost no spoken book, a company of young performers in a city that is part of the subject, and the conviction that the current sound of pop music belongs in a theatre. The line is also personal. Miranda's In the Heights was developed in the wake of Rent, and he has spoken at length about Jonathan Larson, whose own story he later directed.
