 Based on Puccini s  La Boheme ,  Rent  tells the story of one year in the life of friends living the Bohemian life in modern day East Village, New York City, 1989-1990. Among the group are our narrator, nerdy love-struck filmmaker Mark Cohen (Anthony Rapp); the object of Mark s affection, his former girlfriend, Maureen Johnson (Idina Menzel); Maureen s Harvard-educated public interest lawyer and lesbian lover Joanne Jefferson (Traci Thoms); Mark s roommate, HIV-positive musician and former junkie, Roger Davis (Adam Pascal); Roger s new girlfriend, the HIV-positive drug addicted S&M dancer, Mimi Marquez (Rosario Dawson); their former roommate, HIV-positive computer genius Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin); Collins  HIV-positive drag queen street musician/lover Angel (Wilson Jermain Heredia); and Benjamin Coffin III (Taye Diggs) a former member of the group who married for money and has since become their landlord and the opposite of everything they stand for. Shows how much changes or doesn t change in the 525,600 minutes that make up a year.