October 17, 2022, by School of Medicine

Fundraising for the Medic’s Musical 2022/23: RENT

As many of you will know, Nottingham Medical School has a long-standing beloved tradition of performing a musical of choice. My name is Ïa and I am the Producer of this year’s Medic’s Musical – to be performed by our penultimate year medical students in March 2023. Here’s our go-fund-me if you’d like to give it a look!

Last year’s musical was a huge success, with four sold out shows and outstanding reviews. This year we are performing RENT – if you haven’t heard of it already, here’s a wonderful article about it and the man who composed it: Jonathan Larson.

It is a fantastic musical set in the US in the 1990s, during their AIDs epidemic, about various struggling artists trying to make ‘rent’ while also dealing with serious issues going on in their lives. It might be a stretch, but we also love this story because it does remind us of how we are all working to become doctors while also prioritising our mental health and managing our own hectic lives. This musical is therefore that much more special to us, by being one of the ways we prioritise our mental health. We have already started rehearsing and are progressing well. The next step in the process is fundraising to be able to cover the costs associated with the musical, which include royalties and theatre hire.

The musical is important for wellbeing of students as well as culture of our medical school. Student and staff of all different abilities get involved, from designing costumes and running backstage to being leads and playing in the orchestra. Moreover, GEM students and undergraduates come together outside of a clinical environment. Overall, mental health is improved as it provides a fun space to destress and support each other. Since the musical has started, nearly a third of our year have already gotten involved with the musical.

Given the musical RENT is set during the AIDS epidemic, we are planning on raising money for HIV and AIDS charities, and emphasising the importance of sexual health through our fundraising activities. We feel that these are important causes to be aware of as medical students and through this particular musical we can help spread awareness about them! However, in order to do this, we first need to cover the costs of producing a musical. To give you a very brief overview of the costs involved in producing a musical, theatre hire alone costs £7,230, which is over £1,000 greater than last year. As you may be aware, general costs of running these productions has increased over the last 18 months. We would greatly appreciate a donation you feel is appropriate at our go-fund-me: https://gofund.me/79a08f06

Please do have a look at our Instagram page, @medics.musical, if you would like to! And last but certainly not the least, we hope you will be able to attend our show when we perform it in March 2023 (tickets will be released closer to the date)!

Ïa Robert-Montaner, Medic’s Musical 2022/23 Producer

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