“Rent” is coming to town.

And by all accounts, it will feel more like a rock concert than your typical song-and-dance musical when the Tony award-winning production hits the Lied Center stage Monday and Tuesday.

The actors in the rock opera a modern New York version of Puccini’s “La Boh” wear headset microphones like MTV pop stars and blast songs that confront contemporary social issues.

But regardless of the time in which the late Jonathan Larson’s brainchild is set or the specific struggles it confronts, its message tends to ring universal for a diverse array of audiences.

“You only have today,” Kansas native and “Rent” cast member Bruce Wilson Jr. said in a telephone interview. “There are a lot of petty things in life that, in the larger scheme of things, aren’t quite as important. Which isn’t to minimize what people go through, you just have to put things in perspective. ‘Measure your life in love,’ to quote a line from the music.”

Wilson, who grew up in Wichita and graduated from Emporia State University, has been touring with “Rent” since the summer of 2001. He plays Tom Collins, an HIV-positive philosophy teacher who falls in love with Angel, a drag queen and street musician who also has HIV.

“With the exception of the character’s sexuality, I think there’s a lot of me in the character,” Collins said. “I think I play it a little more emotionally than other Collinses in other tours have done in the past.”

“Rent” follows a group of young New York artists as they struggle with HIV, rejection, fear and love. There is very little dialogue in the lyric-driven, high-energy production.

Rent cast members perform a group number. Front and center is Bruce Wilson Jr., who grew up in Wichita and graduated from Emporia State University. He plays Tom Collins in the rock opera that's coming Monday and Tuesday to the Lied Center.

“It borrows from a lot of other musicals in terms of its staging. They use staging techniques used in ‘A Chorus Line,’ ‘Hair’ and ‘Pippen,'” said John Staniunas, Kansas University associate professor of theatre and film. “The difference, of course, is that it’s trying to speak to a new generation of theater-goers and give them the kind of experience they have when they go to a rock concert.”

The older generation hasn’t always taken to the show as kindly, Staniunas said, perhaps because the lyrics aren’t as clear as in more traditional musicals.

“Despite that, it tells a very compelling story,” he said. “It updates ‘La Boh’ to New York. It gives us an opportunity to see, rather than people dying of consumption, now they’re dying of AIDS. So it tries to make relevant all those issues that are in our current society by using a famous love story to do it.”

“La Boh,” an opera set in the 19th century, tells the story of an artist who falls in love with a young, tuberculosis-stricken woman.

The real-life tragedy of “Rent” is that its creator, Larson, was found dead of an aortic aneurysm in his apartment just weeks before the show’s New York premiere and before it was lauded with the Pulitzer, Tonys and Obies.

Wilson said he was excited the tour was swinging through Kansas, where he still has friends and family. “Rent” always gets a warm reception in college towns.

“It’ll blow their minds,” he said of Lawrence ticketholders. “It’s a different kind of show; it’s a different kind of experience. It’s not your typical musical by any stretch of the imagination.

“Those who don’t think they would be interested in that sort of thing should come with an open mind and heart to grow, hopefully, from the experience.”