Profile compiled by Chris Coculuzzi, East Coast Guest Writer

(Chris has been involved in independent and community theatre for more than thirty years as a producer, director, performer, and playwright. He is also an educator, assisting hundreds of students over the last twenty-five years to bring their own creative expressions to life on the stage. Chris resides in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia and is a member of the Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre and a Drama Teacher for the Halifax Regional Centre for Education.)

Recently, Chris attended Neptune Theatre’s Media Call for its upcoming production of Rent, which runs July 10 – August 30, 2026, on the Fountain Hall Stage. He interviewed Sarah Richardson, Music Director for the show. 

Chris C: Do you have any kind of history with this show? And let me kind of preface that. You know how there are musicals for almost every generation? Hamilton’s going to be a certain generation; Les Mis was a certain generation. Is RENT your generation?

 Sarah R: It is, yeah.

 CC: Okay, tell us about that.

 SR: This is actually my first production. But when it came out in the 90s, I was in high school, so I just aged myself very badly.

 CC: Yeah, see, for me it was Les Mis, so I aged myself.

 SR: Yeah, yeah, and Les Mis was the show that I fell in love with, that I knew I wanted to do musical theatre, but RENT was the show that made me realize I had a place in it.

 CC: Great, do you want to elaborate on that?

 SR: Yeah, I was a performer before I was a musical director, and as somebody who didn’t fit the ingenue vibe, I never really knew if that was a world I’d end up in. And then I saw all of these beautiful shapes and sizes and colours and everything that RENT encapsulates, and I knew that I had a place on a stage somewhere.

 CC: And did you ever get to see a production of it before?

 SR: I did. I saw it in Toronto. I actually auditioned at the Mirvish cattle call in Toronto.

 CC: Oh, wow, okay.

 SR: It was a wild ride. Yeah, we were up at 6 o’clock in the morning and showed up at Mirvish, and everybody got a number and went through room after room. And so I did end up seeing it, because I lived in Toronto at the time. I was going to Ryerson, which is now Toronto Metropolitan University. And at that time, Mirvish used to do rush seats for $20, like half an hour before, so my friends and I would run down to the theatre and get tickets to everything we could see. I saw RENT probably four or five times.

 CC: Okay, so you have a personal history with this.

 SR: Yeah, I still have a keychain on my house keys that says “RENT”.

 CC: So then, coming to it now for the first time as a musical director, what kind of insights did you gain when you looked at the score with fresh eyes?

 SR: It’s such a beautiful piece, and there are so many interesting recurring motifs that happen, and you sort of catch little bits and pieces from every song that sort of sneak into a different song. There’s so much beauty in the story, and for me, that is the important part of musical direction: not only teaching the notes and the performers singing their parts, but telling the story effectively and how that serves the entire show. So a lot of people just think it’s a rock show, so they just think they’re supposed to rock out and sing full and whatever else, and I was like, the interesting thing is those nuances and where you build the ups and downs in the story with your voice.

 CC: Kind of a tangent question, so I’m just curious…Because I know you have classical training, yes?

 SR: Sure.

 CC: Any connections to La Bohème? That is, given its inspiration, did you take a look at it?

 SR: Yeah, I did take a look at it. I do very much enjoy opera. It is not in my wheelhouse, but I do have a lot of opera friends, and I grew up listening to all styles of music, including opera. La Bohème was definitely one of them, and I just love that RENT is a modernized version. I think it’s so interesting that so many people sort of mistake RENT for being all these entitled artists who don’t want to pay their rent, but the underlying story is so much deeper in the fact that it is about gay rights, it is about the AIDS crisis, it is about so many things, and so many things are being paralleled in American politics right now, so it’s kind of interesting to bring this back right now.

 CC: Yeah, that segues well into my next question: what is RENT’s relevance, especially after 30 years, and what kinds of points of contact is this production making with it?

 SR: There’s actually a very interesting moment in the middle of the show where Maureen does a protest song, and she talks about how they’re trying to close down performance spaces, which is a little on the nose for right now, as it turns out, with everything that’s happening with the arts cuts here in Nova Scotia. And also with the US sort of stripping gay rights away a little bit again and that kind of thing. It’s so interesting because the underlying story of RENT is that they’re trying to gentrify, and in that era, gay rights didn’t really exist; they were dealing with the AIDS crisis, and that is a brand new piece of information to them in the late 80s/early 90s. 

What happened very often is that if there was a queer couple that was living together, if one was not on the lease—because they had no marital rights—and if someone unfortunately passed, landlords could instantly hike the rent up and basically evict a bunch of people. So the parallel is very interesting with the gay rights being removed again right now and seeing the housing crisis that’s happening right now.

 CC: What do you think RENT’s legacy is in terms of the pantheon of musical theatre?

 SR: Wow, that’s a biggie. I’ve had this conversation quite a few times because [composer/lyricist] Jonathan Larson died on the opening night of the show, so I feel like it’s frozen in time the way it exists. I kind of have always wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t died, and where the show might have evolved to if they had continued to workshop it with him. But because that never happened, it is sort of frozen in time as a little bubble. 

But I think it speaks to so many artists that don’t feel like they fit the “norm” in the fact that the silver-screen sort of old musicals. I love them very much, but I don’t know if there’s necessarily a place for me in those, but I know there’s a place for me in these newer school musicals that I feel like I can live in, and so I think there will always be a place for RENT because the themes will always resonate. Because we will unfortunately probably always have some sort of crisis that we have to deal with, and this whole show is about community, and how despite the crisis, despite the gentrification, despite the AIDS crisis, despite eviction, despite all of it, the community came together and supported each other, and I think that’s such an important theme that will always resonate with everyone as well.

 CC: I feel Fran Lebowitz articulated the AIDS crisis really well when she pointed out that not only did it wipe out incredible artists, but it also wiped out a critical audience. I see RENT as almost encapsulating that kind of coming to an end of a certain period, and where do we go from there, kind of thing.

 SR: Yeah, it’s interesting.

 CC: I’m just curious, I saw members of the pit band on the balconies in the set, is that the style?

 SR: Yeah, the whole band is out on stage.

 CC: So nobody’s underneath the stage?

 SR: No. There are five of us. I’m just back up here on this platform in the back corner.

We have keys too and guitar too up here, drums on this level, guitar and bass, so we’re all out front.

 CC: Are you guys costumed?

 SR: They left it to us to a certain extent, where they basically just said, “This is the vibe, like we’re in the late 80s, early 90s, and dress accordingly,” and so it’s kind of been a fun little thing because everybody’s gotten into it. So the whole band is like, “This is my look today,” so it’s great, it’s super fun, yeah.

 CC: What would you say are some of the major challenges that you had as musical director?

 SR: It’s just such a sung-through show. It never stops. For the musicians, we actually never stop. Some of the actors may get the opportunity to leave the stage, but the musicians are constantly playing. I think there are maybe five to seven minutes in the whole show when we aren’t playing.

 CC: Is there one intermission or two intermissions?

 SR: There’s the one intermission in the middle. The first act is about an hour and a half, and the second act is just shy of an hour. But we are nonstop, and because of that, one unique challenge is that the entire cast never stops singing. So the big challenges are vocal health, consistency in work, and that kind of thing. 

Also, because it is a rock show, the instinct is to like really push and really ornament, and what we want to do is really serve the story the way it should be served, and make sure that everybody’s staying safe and healthy. So those are all sorts of in my house of things I have to do.

 CC: So do you spend your time between here and Toronto?

 SR: I’m kind of everywhere. This is home.

 CC: Has it always been home?

 SR: It’s been home for half my life now. I moved here after I finished university. In the last three years, I spent a year in Toronto, and then I’ve been back and forth. This year alone, I was in London, Ottawa, Gananoque, and Port Hope.

 CC: So, mostly here and in Ontario?

 SR: Yeah, here and Ontario, yeah, for the most part. I’m out in Edmonton shortly after this.

 CC: Got to go where the work is, right?

 SR: Yeah, and it’s kind of lovely because it’s something I’ve been working my whole life towards: creating a world in the arts that I can sustain my life with. I’m a bit of a niche because I do musical direction, and most theatres do musicals, but at the same time, they usually do only one or two a year, which means I have to sort of move around to get to do the work I can do.

 CC: Yes, you have to be nomadic.

 SR: Yeah, a little bit. So it’s a bit rough because, you know, I have pets and stuff.

 CC: Right, yeah, you’ve got practical things you’ve got to take care of.

 SR: Yeah, I’ve a partner, but thankfully it’s worked so far and keeps working, and hopefully a positive reputation precedes me so I can continue to work.

 CC: Well, yes, certainly deserved accolades on your awards and all the work you’ve been doing. Now, a final question: correct me if I’m wrong, but you do other things. That is, you’re a singer in other bands, yes?

 SR: That’s right.

 CC: So I’m curious…you must see different styles when it comes to music, like musical numbers versus whatever you’re doing personally in your bands. Do you see all of that on a spectrum, or do you compartmentalize?

 SR: I do see it on a spectrum because I know there is value in the training, and if you do the work and get the technique under your belt, you can sort of encompass many styles. You have to, obviously, if you want to go into something like opera, which is very specialized, you have to do a whole set of different training for that.

But I think if you learn the sort of classical training and the technique underneath, then you have the opportunity to take different venues with your voice. And I think there’s value, too, in the fact that, like vocal placement, you can use them in every style. Everybody thinks that rock and roll is just belting it out, and it doesn’t have to be. I think that there is value in all of the different styles of musical theatre and music.

 CC: And the fact that you branch out into these other areas- do you feel like that’s coming from a specific creative need?

 SR: Yeah, for me…yeah, personally… I do.

 CC: Like, musical theatre is good, but it can only go so far?

 SR: It’s not that it can only go so far; it’s just that, because it usually lives in a certain bubble of its own, I have a desire to create in other venues. And even our sound designer and I have improvised music together with his husband. And so I just love the opportunity to reach out into different avenues.

 CC: And that other aspect of yourself?

 SR: Yeah, everybody’s very multifaceted, and that just gives me the opportunity to explore the things that I want to explore.

 CC: Do you think that those other aspects creep into your musical direction?

 SR: Oh, for sure. I have a lot of conversations when we’re first learning pieces, where, you know, we do a lot of discussions about where we think it’s coming from and how we think it serves the story, but also like the value of trying different things with the voice. Maybe we pull into a falsetto here because it makes it sound gentler, or maybe we back-phrase a little to show a bit of anxiety or nervousness. 

So I think there’s a lot of value in different vocal styles and techniques for figuring out how to tell the story properly. I think because I have a lot of that pedagogy at my fingertips, it’s helpful as a musical director with the artists I’m working with.

 CC: And do you also teach?

 SR: I do. I coach more than I teach now. I do teach, but a lot of this makes my schedule very erratic, so having standard student time is not as easy as I would like, but I do.

 CC: Do you do more one-on-one?

 SR: Yeah, more one-on-one, but also here at Neptune for quite a few years, I’ve done like group coaching with the theatre school and with the Young Company.

 CC: Oh, okay, very good.

 SR: Yeah, so I sort of end up working with students. We do mentorship programs, or we do professional workshops and that kind of thing, so we get people from the industry to come in and work with them and critique or advise or anything along those lines, yeah.

 CC: That’s fantastic. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Thanks so much for your time. Nice meeting you.

 SR: Yeah, you too. Thank you.

To learn more about Sarah Richardson, please click: https://www.talenthouse.ca/sarah-richardson-music-director 

Sarah Richardson’s headshot taken from Talent House website: talenthouse.ca.