'No day but today'_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

'No day but today'

So, who are these people?

They are China's aficionados of musical theater, white-collar workers and college students whose knowledge of a worldwide repertory has made them die-hard fans and experts. Their platform is a website called Chinamusical.net, which was set up in 2005. It has 31,842 registered members, but as Jia Yi, one of the two producer-directors of Rent, points out, the core base is just a few hundred.

From talking to some of them, I got the impression that the watershed event in musical theater in China was Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, in Shanghai, nearly 10 years ago. Xu Feili watched Phantom three times, with her mother, a music teacher. This time she was cast in the role of Joanne, in Rent.

"I started taking singing lessons after I developed an interest in musicals. They gave more power to my singing voice," Xu explains.

About half of the Rent cast is from Shanghai. They have a couple of gatherings every year, putting on segments of favorite shows.

"Each of us has devoted ourselves to the study of one or two shows, and mine is Miss Saigon and Thoroughly Modern Millie," Xu says.

Xu's day job is sales manager of a hotel. The other actress, who plays her lesbian lover Maureen, works at an insurance company. Roger the rock musician is a public servant in real life. Angel, the cross-dressing boy with a heart of gold, is a pharmacist. Only the actors playing Mark and Collins have formal training in music or performing arts. The supporting roles that form the chorus hail mostly from Tsinghua University, China's MIT.