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Tick, Tick... Boom! (styled as tick, tick... BOOM!) is a musical by Jonathan Larson. It tells the story of an aspiring composer named Jon, who lives in New York City in 1990. Jon is worried he has made the wrong career choice to be part of the performing arts. The story is semi-autobiographical, as stated by Larson's father in the liner notes of the cast recording – Larson had been trying to establish himself in theater since the early 1980s.
Larson began to perform the piece as a solo work in 1990. After his death, in 1996, it was revised and revamped by playwright David Auburn as a three-actor piece and was premiered Off-Broadway in 2001.[1] Since then, the show has had an Off West End production, a West End production, an American national tour, two Off-Broadway revivals, in 2014 and 2016, and numerous local and international productions.
A film adaptation, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield in the lead role, was released by Netflix in November 2021. It received positive reviews from critics.
History
The show was first performed Off-off-Broadway between September 6 and September 9, 1990 by Jonathan Larson in a workshop at the Second Stage Theater under the title Boho Days. Larson revised the developing piece following Second Stage, changing the title to Tick, Tick... Boom!, and presented with him as performer in November 1991 at the Village Gate (produced by Larson's college friend Victoria Leacock), and then later in 1992 and 1993 in the "O Solo Mio" fests at New York Theatre Workshop.[2] Larson performed the show as a "rock monologue", a new form of theatre for the time. The performance attracted the attention of a young producer named Jeffrey Seller, who became a fan of Larson's work. In 1995, he saw the New York Theatre Workshop production of Larson's musical Rent and convinced his fellow producers to bring it to Broadway.
After Larson's death in 1996, Leacock asked David Auburn, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof, to reconfigure Tick, Tick... Boom!. He restructured the monologue into a three-actor musical,[3] with one actor playing Jon and the other two actors playing Michael and Susan, as well as all the other roles in the show. Also, the script and score were streamlined and edited. This revised version of the piece premiered Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on May 23, 2001. Auburn received credit as "Script Consultant".
