Adam Pascal directing 'Rent' in Dix Hills

“You’re making it too physical,” the director tells Jakeim Hart, the actor playing Roger in “Rent,” opening later this month in Dix Hills. “It’s important,” he clarifies “to be comfortable just doing nothing.” Hart hangs on every word, as well he should. The director in question is Adam Pascal, who was nominated for a Tony Award when he played the part on Broadway in 1996 and reprised the role in the 2005 film.

Just off the national tour of “Pretty Woman,” Pascal says he’s been interested in directing for a while, after conducting numerous workshops and teaching a class at UCLA. “I love working with actors,” he says, “and having made musicals for so long, I feel like I know how to make these things work.”

The Woodbury native reached out to Gene Forman, owner of From Stage to Screen, a theater academy in Huntington, where Pascal’s niece had taken classes. The conversation started with ideas for a few workshops, but plans quickly blossomed into a full-scale production, with four shows scheduled July 28-30 at Five Towns College.

“It couldn’t have worked out better,” says Pascal, explaining he’s spending the summer at his sister’s house in Huntington. “I live essentially around the corner. It was the perfect opportunity to get my first full-scale production.”

So many people loved Pascal in the show, says Forman. “The fact that he’s doing this has created a buzz we’ve never encountered before,” he says, noting that when tickets went on sale in mid-June, more than 500 were sold in three hours. “When you take the original Roger from ‘Rent’ making his directorial debut on Long Island, five miles from where he grew up,” says Forman, “there’s magic.”

THE RESONANCE OF ‘RENT’

The show, which earned the 1996 best musical Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, resonates with people on many levels, says Pascal. Based on the Puccini opera “La Bohème,” the musical touches the heart through its great music (“Seasons of Love” is the biggest hit), and its great tragedy (writer Jonathan Larson died on the eve of the first preview).

“New fans of ‘Rent’ don’t know anything about Jonathan Larson and that whole story,” he says. “It’s just such an incredibly well-crafted musical; the music is great, the story is great … people love these characters and feel really connected to the friendship and love they give.”

“People are obsessed with the show because of the feelings it invokes,” says Forman. “It’s a community of underdogs … it resonates with a person who doesn’t feel heard.”

After just a few weeks in the directing role, Pascal is surprised by how much he’s enjoying the process. “Not that I didn’t think I’d like it,” he says, but “I really like it. I didn’t expect it.” It’s the first time Pascal has been on this side of the casting process, and it was far from simple — around 600 people submitted video auditions.

All eyes, of course, were on who he would cast as Roger. Hart, a Mineola-born, Huntington-raised actor who just finished a run in “Almost Famous” on Broadway, is — like many of his fellow actors — performing on the Island this summer for the opportunity to work with Pascal. “I grew up with ‘Rent,’ “ says Hart, first appearing in the show in 2010 as a student at From Stage to Screen. “I was 16 at the time,” says Hart. “I didn’t really have an appreciation for the heart of the show … I just really liked singing the music. To come back now, 13 years later, is a full-circle moment.”

‘THE ROGER MOMENTS’

In the early stages of rehearsals, Hart was looking forward to getting into “the Roger moments” with Pascal. “One of the first things he said to us was this show works when you don’t try to make it work,” says Hart, who will appear this fall in the Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Public Theater in Manhattan. Pascal told us to “just be there and be in the moment, and sing the music because that’s what the audience is connected with.”

“He gave the best audition,” says Pascal of Hart. “There was something about him, his temperament,” but “it came down to his voice — and his guitar playing.”

Forman says he stayed out of the casting, but he can’t hide his pride that a former student got the part. “I didn’t say a word about Jakeim until after he was cast,” says Forman, adding that it’s great validation for the school. “I’ll take a little credit for Jakeim’s growth, but he was great as a child. We helped steer him in the right direction.”

As for Pascal, he’s hoping this is just the start of his directing career. He’d like to take on “Disaster,” the musical parody of '70s disaster movies, which he starred in on Broadway. But he’s also interested in shows he doesn’t know. “It’s really more about exploring that concept,” he says. “Directing things I’m unfamiliar with is really the challenge.”