RENT: Beyond the Stage — A Conversation About Art, Medicine & Survival

RENT changed musical theatre—but the story it tells reaches far beyond the stage. Join us after the final performance on Sunday, September 20, around 5:30 p.m., for a powerful conversation about the world that gave rise to RENT, the lives transformed by the AIDS crisis, and the extraordinary ways medicine, personal experience, and art helped change society. This is more than a conversation about RENT. It is a conversation about what happens when people refuse to be silent—and what can happen when medicine, art, and human courage come together.

Dr. Jennifer Janelle, an infectious disease specialist at UF Health and a leader in HIV care and education, will explore how the HIV/AIDS crisis transformed medicine and what that legacy means today—including her work providing care in rural Florida. Gainesville’s own Marvene Edwards will share her remarkable story of surviving HIV/AIDS and turning her experience into a life of helping others. And Patricia Tomlinson, Executive Director of Arts in Health Ocala Metro, will examine the powerful relationship between art and social change: how the music, theatre, visual art, activism, and creative expression born out of the AIDS crisis gave voice to a generation—and helped change hearts, minds, policy, and the culture itself.