Anthony Rapp talks 'very intimate' stage return in Touch and Rent's 30th

When he stepped out onto the 500-square-foot stage of New York City’s East Village Basement theater Saturday night, actor Anthony Rapp returned to the Manhattan theater scene for the first time in nearly two years. He told Out magazine he will be marking a few personal milestones along the way.

“It’s a very intimate play,” Rapp said in a phone conversation during a dinner break between rehearsals for the opening night of Touch, his one-man, off-Broadway show written by playwright Kenny Finkle and directed by Jonathan Silverstein. Rapp said he’s never performed in front of an audience as small as this one.

“It’s a great thing that it’s an incredibly intimate space, just 40-seats,” he said. “So, it just feels really right, like, form meeting content in a great way. It’s been a very new experience.”

Another milestone is that he and his most important audience — that of his husband, Ken Ithiphol, and their two sons, Rai Larson Ithiphol and Keony Lee Ithiphol — have never been apart this long.

“We moved to Chicago, and this is hard being so far away,” said Rapp, who said his boys are just getting over the flu and he is looking forward to reuniting with his family at the end of this show’s run. “I’m separated from them for three weeks while I’m doing this, which is hard. I don’t like being apart, that’s the one drag. It’s longer than I’ve ever been apart from them, but it’s for a worthwhile reason, meaning a good piece of work.”

Ken Ithiphol and Anthony Rapp pose at the opening night of the new musical 'The Jonathan Larson Project'Bruce Glikas/Getty Images

Rapp said he first had the opportunity to perform Touch at a festival in Aspen, where Finkle’s play won an award that provided them with $10,000 in seed money to develop this production.

“From the first page, I was feeling like I was in incredibly good hands,” he said. “I just felt like I understood this man, where the story went, how Kenny writes the inner and outer voices of this really interesting human being. I felt this connection to him, and to the work.”

Rapp plays Syd Blatter, a middle-aged gay man who is a burned-out, fifth-grade teacher and a failed writer. One day, his life is suddenly turned upside down when he has a surprising run-in with a former student.

Rapp said this play gave him with the opportunity to investigate “important, meaningful and resonant questions.”

“Syd is a character who is having a moral crisis,” Finkle said. “He crosses some lines, and then he’s accused of something that would be inappropriate, or it would be wrong.”

Finkle, who will celebrate his 55th birthday next month and his 15th wedding anniversary with his husband in June, grew up in Miami, studied acting as an undergrad at NYU, and earned a master’s in playwriting at Columbia. He said that while the central figure in Touch is a gay man, the story is ultimately about power, relationships, and time.

“I think that the play asks the audience to decide for themselves, but also to look at the nuance of what it means to be human,” he said. “What it means to be a man and what it means to be a teacher and how close — or not close — we get to the people that we teach and work with.”

“One of the things I love about being an actor is that I get to wear other people’s clothes, live in their psyche and bring their words to life. My job is to bring the words that are on the page to life.”

Rapp has been doing so ever since making his film debut in the film, Adventures in Babysitting in 1987, up to and including The Beauty, a new thriller TV series on FX about deaths in the modeling industry, starring Evan Peters and Ashton Kutcher.

But Rapp is also, of course, no stranger to the stage, having last starred in his moving, autobiographical one-man show based on his memoir, Without You, in April 2024. A decade earlier, he reunited with Idina Menzel when he originated the role of Lucas in the hit Broadway musical If/Then as well as appearing in the national tour from 2014 to 2016. And this summer he will once again join his other fellow Rent alum and frequent concert costar, Adam Pascal, in celebrating the iconic rock musical’s 30th anniversary.

Back in 1996, the morning before the cast of Rent staged their first off-Broadway preview performance, its creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly at age 35. Despite the shock, the show went on, and Menzel made her debut as Maureen Johnson, Pascal starred as Roger Davis and Rapp played Mark Cohen. They went on to make Broadway history.

Adam Pascal, Tracie Thoms, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs and Rosario Dawson from the movie "Rent" James Devaney/WireImage

He was asked if his legendary connection to Rent is something he still embraces, or if it feels more like an albatross that he’d finally like to shake off, three decades later.

“It’s not an albatross, not at all,” said Rapp. “I should be so lucky, and I am lucky, truly. It’s an honor to be a part of something that’s meant so much to so many people and still has staying power and resonance.”

In January, Pascal joined Rapp at Manhattan’s 54 Below supper club for a live-streamed musical concert celebrating their friendship and legacy. The duo first performed together in that 147-seat venue a decade ago, and they’ll be returning there again in August.

“Adam and I do lots of concerts, still, which I’m thrilled about,” Rapp said, adding that another reunion with some of their Rent costars is in the works: “We’re going to be doing something, with a nice little group of us, it’s called ‘The Festival.’”

That 30th anniversary celebration featuring Rapp, Pascal and others will be staged in Kingston, New York, also this August. But Rapp said there are no plans for an all-star cast Broadway reunion.

“All of our concerts are something of a celebration of [Rent], but beyond that, we’re not doing a big, big, big thing with everyone.”

Rapp did have a message for Star Trek fans, who missed seeing him in the latest iteration of the 60-year-old franchise, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, alongside his fellow out queer castmates Tig Notaro and Mary Wiseman. Rapp was one half of the first out gay couple in Star Trek, alongside Wilson Cruz on Star Trek: Discovery from 2017 to 2024. He said he’s open to playing Paul Stamets again, if only someone at Paramount/Skydance would call.

“Of course! In a heartbeat,” said Rapp. “It’s such an interesting person. It would be fun to live in his shoes again."

Until then, or at least through March 30, fans can see Rapp inhabit the shoes of Syd Blatter at the East Village Basement at 321 E 9th Street, New York, N.Y. Learn more at www.touchtheplaynyc.com.