Fredi Walker-Browne and friends at NYTW’s benefit. Photo: Jon Burklund/ZANNI Productions New York Theatre Workshop punches far above its weight. The gutsy little theater on East 4th Street, just in recent seasons, has produced shows like Slave Play, Once , and Hadestown, all of which later traveled uptown to play successfully on Broadway. Its primary impact on the theatrical Zeitgeist, though, struck way back in 1996, with the super-blockbuster Rent , Jonathan Larson’s rock adaptation of Puccini’s La Bohème. To celebrate the show’s silver anniversary, NYTW organized its annual fundraising benefit as a kind of birthday celebration. Between solicitations for donations, it invited current workshop collaborators to talk about Rent ’s impact on their work, Zoomed with old cast and crew members to share their memories of making the show, and presented new interpretations of a few Rent songs by the current crop of Broadway stars. Daphne Rubin-Vega videoed in, looking … [Read more...] about The Highs and Lows of NYTW’s