Life is such exquisite irony sometimes..."Rent" opens tonight at Le Petit Theatre in the French Quarter, finally. We've been in rehearsals for the past month and a half and it couldn't be more fitting that during this most broke of phases I've had the songs from this show as my personal soundtrack. Hustling, struggling to live my art and pay the bills, learning what it means to be an independent artist and figuring out where the rent is coming from while rehearsing this show every night has been rather deep. What I'm getting paid for the run is barely enough to cover the rent, but I was clear about my reasons for wanting to do it when I auditioned, and the other benefits I'm getting balance everything out, somehow. All I wanted was to sing the solo on "Seasons of Love," which is exactly what I do in the play, among other things...

This show was a healing to me when I saw it on Broadway during the months I spent in New York after Katrina (strangely I never managed to see it when I was living there). I was more moved by it than I've ever been by a theater production. Being in it has taken that healing to another level for me: it has given me a safe structure and environment within which to express and continue to process the grief that has stalked me since my grandfather died with AIDS in 2001. My uncle's death from it in 1988 was a blow that struck close to home but didn't hit me as hard, and my father's nine-year journey with it (before he succombed to cancer in 2005) was an opportunity for me to accompany a warrior through an obstacle course of addiction and illness to numerous victories and a place of bottomless courage. My grandfather's surrender to AIDS is the one I just haven't been able to get all the way over. I'm singing through it, though, facing it head on every night, and I think doing this play is moving me closer to being able to write my own songs about it, find the language and the sounds that will unlock what has stayed stuck and stagnant inside me from that nightmare and finally let it be released as a healing flow that will be a blessing to others as I am blessed by the letting go of it. Songs in the key of Life!

Come see the show if you are in New Orleans and can afford it.