Homophobe walks out of Rent performance because they ‘didn’t realise it was about gays’
"Hate is always foolish and love is always wise," the company said afterward.
Words: Alastair James; Image: 2016 performance of Rent, Gytis Vidziunas, Wiki Creative Commons
A performance of the musical RENT was disrupted in Leeds over the weekend after one homophobic theatre-goer stormed out of the show because they didn’t realise it was “about gays”.
Bite My Thumb’s production of Jonathan Larson’s seminal work was playing at The Carriagework Theatre in Leeds between 9 and 12 March.
Posting a statement on Twitter after the matinee performance on Saturday (12 March) the company addressed the incident.
“Hate is always foolish and love is always wise”
“After a storming performance of ‘Today 4 U, Tomorrow 4 Me’, a single audience member, picked up their coat, rose from their chair and left the auditorium,” the statement reads.
It continues: “On exiting the individual turned to a member of the front of house team and declared: ‘I DIDN’T REALISE THIS SHOW WAS ABOUT GAYS’. All the cast, creatives and backstage crew of the production were utterly disgusted to hear about this display of small minded ignorance.”
Bite My Thumb also says that they chose to perform RENT to “give a voice to the LGBTQ+ community and educate on the horrors of the AIDS epidemic.”
A statement from us about a horrible incident during our matinee performance at @carriageworks_ pic.twitter.com/WZeTJFvOPp
— Bite My Thumb (@bitethumb) March 13, 2022
However, the company decided to turn a negative into a positive.
“In a bid to take a single individual’s hate and create something positive from it,” the company writes, “Bite My Thumb will be donating a percentage of that performance’s box office to a LGBTQ+ charity that will decided upon by our cast.
“So thank you to that close minded, out-dated person. Your appalling attitude now means an underfunded LGBTQ+ organisation will receive a donation it so desperately needs and will put to good use.
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“Hate is always foolish and love is always wise.”
RENT tells the story of a group of friends in New York City in the nineties during the Aids epidemic. It was written by Jonathan Larson, who sadly passed away from an aortic dissection the night before the first Off-Broadway performance in 1996.
The play was later adapted into a 2005 film starring Idina Menzel, Rosario Dawson and former Attitude cover star Anthony Rapp.
Lasron’s life story was recently told in the musical biopic tick, tick… boom!, starring Andrew Garfield as the late playwright.
It has since gone on to become massively popular within the theatre and LGBTQ communities and ran for 12 years on Broadway, as well as having a film version made starring most of the original Broadway cast.