Rent
Rent, which won an American Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize, was one of the first Broadway musicals to feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters. In addition, its cast was notably ethnically diverse. Rent brought controversial topics to a traditionally conservative medium, and it helped to increase the popularity of musical theater amongst the younger generation. Rent speaks to Generation X the way that the musical Hair spoke to the baby boomers or those who grew up in the 1960s, calling it "a rock opera for our time, a Hair for the 90s."