After several years of workshopping, Rent began an Off-Broadway run in early 1996, though Larson died from an aortic dissection the day before its first preview performance.

[8] At an early age, Larson played the trumpet and tuba, sang in his school's choir, and took piano lessons.

It played a four-week showcase run at Rusty's Storefront Blitz, a small theatre on 42nd Street in New York, Manhattan, and won both authors a writing award from ASCAP.

Due to complications at birth, Josh maintained his emotions, and spent his life as an inventor, searching for something that could wake up the rest of his family and society.

He meets Elizabeth In, a girl his age from INCITY, who convinces him to spread the power of the music box.

The INs are the celebrities of this society who spend their days having their scripted lives filmed and transmitted to the OUTs as entertainment.

By the time Larson finished his final draft of the show, it was a much darker piece that took a deeper look into the power of emotions and mankind's attachment to technology.

In 2019, the song "One of these Days", originally sung by Josh near the beginning of the early drafts of Superbia, was included on the album "The Jonathan Larson Project".

This piece, written for only Larson with a piano and rock band, drew on his feelings of rejection caused by the disappointment of Superbia.

The stage version premiered off-Broadway in 2001 and starred Raúl Esparza as Larson, a performance for which he earned an Obie Award.

BOOM!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield (in an Academy Award nominated performance) as Larson, with a rewritten script by Steven Levenson was released on Netflix on November 12, 2021.

In 1992, Larson 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 with each episode taking a different Biblical or mythological story and giving it a '90s celebrity twist.

The project was shelved due to scheduling conflicts among the five composers but resurfaced over 20 years later in a six-page Playbill article.

[14] Larson's strongest musical theatre influence was Stephen Sondheim, with whom he corresponded, and to whom he occasionally submitted his work for review.

He performed in John MacLachlan Gray's musical Billy Bishop Goes to War, which starred his close friend actor Roger Bart.

Rent 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.

Once the show was over, there was a long applause followed by silence which was eventually broken when an audience member shouted out "Thank you, Jonathan Larson.

[20] In addition to the New York Theatre Workshop, Rent was produced by Jeffrey Seller, who was introduced to Larson's work when attending an off-Broadway performance of Boho Days, and two of his producer friends who also wished to support the work, Kevin McCollum and Allan S. Gordon.

He was assessed at Cabrini Medical Center on January 21 and at St. Vincent's Hospital on January 23, but doctors found nothing of concern in X-rays or electrocardiograms (EKGs), and variously attributed his symptoms to stress, food poisoning, or a virus; a note from one doctor on an EKG speculated about a possible myocardial infarction, but the matter was not further pursued.

[23] At around 12:30 a.m. on January 25, 1996, the scheduled day of the first preview performance, Larson returned to his apartment from a production meeting, and collapsed in the kitchen.

The New York State Department of Health launched an investigation and concluded that it is possible he could have lived if the aortic dissection had been properly diagnosed and treated with cardiac surgery.

The collection includes numerous musicals, revues, cabarets, pop songs, dance and video projects – both produced and un-produced.

It starred George Salazar, Lauren Marcus, Andy Mientus, Krysta Rodriguez, and Nick Blaemire.

[31][32] A full Off-Broadway version of the project will open at the Orpheum Theatre on March 10, 2025, with previews set to begin February 14.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with high praise for director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s direction in his directorial debut, score, and musical sequences, and Garfield's performance garnering universal acclaim.

[28] Notable winners of the grant include Dave Malloy, Laurence O'Keefe, Nell Benjamin, Amanda Green, Joe Iconis, Pasek and Paul, Shaina Taub and Michael R. Jackson.