Schulman recounts, with a surreal edge, the myriad conversations she had about Rent and People in Trouble with editors, journalists, agents, lawyers and friends, from the anonymous to the famous. She lays out the similarities between the musical and novel with great simplicity and recounts how her initially strong belief that justice would be hers slid into a crushing realization that such an outcome would elude her. She builds a compelling case for herself while describing how she was deeply shaken by the experience. But her arguments about being denied justice and press exposure are not nearly as strong as her impassioned defense of People in Trouble. (Schulman's efforts at finding legal counsel seem to have been highly selective, and she casts her story in outsized, David versus Goliath terms--a lone East Village artist with no cultural or economic power against a huge, invincible mass of corporate art. Perhaps the New York editors and journalists who didn't seem to care about her story would have displayed a different news sense had she actually sued the Larson estate.)

Schulman also gives us her own view of art: "Corporate art is the opposite of art because it denies the value of eccentric investigation.... I offer you this book and hope that it gives you something worth thinking about, because, even if it doesn't produce money, it can produce a level of inquiry that is really interesting." However, Schulman omits any mention of her own benefit from the capital exchange inherent in publishing: She offers the book to a publisher and receives a fee; the publisher offers the book to readers (for a price) through bookstores (another group of commercial corporations), where Schulman often conducts readings and signings. It may be true that Schulman is among only a handful of gay and lesbian artists who have not abandoned their communal subject matter for more commercial, mass-market material, but she has nonetheless published nine books. As she recounts in Stagestruck, she has also received numerous university teaching appointments as a result of her books. Even if she hasn't gotten rich, ignoring her own capital benefit, however small, is a disservice to her readers.

Another compelling part of the book is the subsection "The Lesbian Theatrical Context of Rent," with its concise but crisp history of lesbians in the theater and its concentration on how difficult it was for their work to find outlets for production. Schulman describes the hope she felt when George Wolfe, an openly gay African-American, took charge of New York's Joseph Papp Public Theater, which she believes has always underrepresented lesbian work. She recounts a call she made to the theater inquiring whether it would now be interested in lesbian work. The response Schulman got, according to the book, was that the theater was interested in "lesbians of color." (Schulman is white.)

"She's entitled to think whatever she thinks about our history," says Wolfe. "But I'm horrified that someone at the theater said 'We're interested in lesbians of color.' Assuming someone did say that, I apologize. That is not the policy of this theater. The only agenda I have is to make every season as complex and diverse as possible." Wolfe points out that the Public recently produced a solo piece by Lisa Kron, a member of the longtime theater troupe The Five Lesbian Brothers, and Stop Kiss, Diana Son's play about what happens to two women when they kiss.

"I would have loved to do Stop Kiss three years ago," he says. "But the work has to be nurtured and polished before it's put on display. We didn't do the play three years ago because it wasn't available."

Schulman expressed appreciation for Wolfe's statements--"I'm glad the Public as a forum is changing"--but also counters that "all the people in that section of the book have been working for thirty years. They have not been given readings or residencies. Their work has been institutionally underdeveloped. [Wolfe] is the only person in New York actually producing this kind of theater, and that makes the Public's omission of lesbian work all the more disappointing."

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