First year student plays complex character in ‘RENT’

It is easy to see that the young actor who portrays filmmaker Mark in the upcoming “RENT” is excited as well as invested in his character as cast members rehearsed songs in the lobby of the studio theater more than an hour before the regular rehearsal began Monday night.

Matt Rowning, is a 19-year-old, first-year student at Clackamas Community College and recent graduate of Clackamas High School.

He is currently an undecided major who is “enjoying theater and music a lot.”

Rowning’s theater career started his junior year of high school after he saw his first musical, “Les Miserables,” when it was performed at his high school the previous year.

As a senior, Rowning was a part of the cast of the musical comedy “Bye Bye Birdie,” as well as being involved in several one-act plays.

Rowning was involved in the children’s musical “The Peppermint Bear Show: Who Needs Sneed’s” at the Lakewood Theatre Company in Lake Oswego in December.

“Coming over here has been a joy, moving away from children’s theater for the first time and into college,” Rowning said. “This fell at an extremely opportune time. I finished ‘Peppermint Bear’ and I immediately started ‘RENT.’ ”

Rowning has been playing classical guitar for seven years as well as French horn for six years. “I am also a piano player and a musical director when I can. I have assistant-directed several musicals,” he said.

“So when I saw my first musical, which actually was ‘Les Miserables,’ it was sort of mind blowing because it was all the components that I worked on, that I was already doing in my life,” he said. “I was already conducting, I was already writing some of my own music and playing guitar and playing French horn and I hadn’t started singing yet, but when I saw this on stage, I said, ‘Wow, this is the highest form of my craft, and I want to be involved in this,’ ” Rowning said.

Rowning added, “My musical background is what drew me to musicals, and I’m more drawn to musicals than straight theater.”

For the young performer, although he was unfamiliar with the story before entering the show, he now feels a connection with the character he portrays. “I completely connect with Mark,” Rowning said.

“Mark is so multifaceted. He has been left by his girlfriend for another woman and I can tell firsthand that that is not a pleasant thing to have happen. Mark still has feelings for her,” Rowning said. “I think Mark has a guilt that he is kind of privileged in some way.”

According to Rowning, Mark is one of the characters who does not suffer from AIDS; the other characters who do not are Joanne, Maureen and Benny. And because of that, he is guilt ridden because he will live and his friends will not.

“Mark is all by himself and he doesn’t have anyone to love, unlike everyone else, and because of that he desperately needs this community feeling, because there isn’t that person.  Because of that, he will go to any length to keep that community together,” Rowning said.

Rowning said that “Mark is an extremely complex character, I feel, compared to anything I’ve had to do in the past.”

Mark is a 20-something-year-old filmmaker who is the narrator. “He is the mouthpiece through which ‘RENT’ is told,” Rowning said. “He’s not the romantic lead, he’s never involved in a romance. He simply lays the story out, more or less with his camera,” he said.

His goals are to finish his associates of arts requirements and then to move east to finish up in a musical theater program. “I do totally anticipate continuing with musical theater, at least as a hobby, if not a career,” he said.