Superbia (musical)

Superbia is an unproduced musical with book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Stemming from an earlier attempt at writing a musical based on Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Larson spent a six-year period from 1985 to 1991 working on Superbia, which for numerous reasons never went beyond the workshop stage of development.^[2] Eventually, Larson set aside Superbia for other projects, including Rent, and died in 1996 before he could return to working on it.

Superbia was a science fiction musical set in the year 2064 in a world dominated by TVs and cameras. The overall message Larson pursued, which remained to his final draft, was a cautionary tale about media desensitization. He described it as a futuristic fairy tale along the lines of Cinderella and The Emperor's New Clothes. Larson wanted to blend the inherent theatricality of 1980s pop with musical theater storytelling. To that end, he composed the musical largely on a synthesizer, combining New Wave synth-pop and rock with traditional Broadway and vaudevillian structures. Superbia thus represents Larson's first serious attempt to meld popular music styles with musical theater, a combination he later became well-known for with Rent.^{[3]: 39–76}

Superbia has never been produced or published even after Larson's death, but interest in it has persisted due to its depiction in his semi-autobiographical musical Tick, Tick... Boom! and its 2021 film adaptation.