Joan Marcus

When a press agent hands you over to actor Anthony Rapp, you know you’re talking to the man who knows “Rent” inside out. This is the guy who has been with the show from the beginning, from the workshops to Broadway, who has been in the film and written a New York Times best-selling memoir about his years with the production.

Now he is coming this week to PPAC with “Rent,” in the Broadway Tour, so named because so many members of the cast took part in the Broadway run. He is being joined by Adam Pascal and Gwen Stewart, who were also in the original Broadway cast. In fact, he said he wasn’t willing to do the tour unless Pascal joined him, because they have so much history together.

“It’s not that the show would be bad or miserable,” said Rapp from Des Moines. “It’s just that there would be something huge missing.”

Rapp, who plays Mark Cohen in the show, said he and Pascal rejoined the Broadway production back in 2007 for a few weeks and that all those associated with it — audiences included — were “jazzed.” When “Rent” closed on Broadway, said Rapp, the producers wanted to take that feeling to people who missed the New York show.

He also admitted that the presence of some recognizable names didn’t hurt the box office. Previous incarnations — including three at PPAC since 2000 — had used young players right out of college. “This is the first time in years they’ve done an Equity show,” he said, referring to the actors’ union.

There is probably no bigger fan of the show than Rapp, who has developed a one-man show based on his 2006 memoir “Without You.” For one thing he’s a big fan of the score, which he called “powerful, catchy and eclectic.” The show’s creator, the late Jonathan Larson, knew how to write for the musical theater, knew how to turn out something entertaining, but also knew how to break the rules, Rapp believes.

Loosely based on Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” “Rent” is about a group of struggling artists living in a lower East Side loft amid the spectres of AIDS and drug addiction. It is, in other words, a frank, hard-hitting show about real-life situations that helped change the face of theater.

Rapp said the success of “Rent”— and it has a huge and loyal fan base — has opened the way for shows like “Avenue Q” and “Spring Awakening.”

“It just tells the truth about the profound experience of love and loss,” he said, something that became even more telling after Larson died at 35 of an aneurysm, just hours after the final off-Broadway dress rehearsal.

The show continues to speak to new generations of fans. Rapp, 38, said he has met a lot of teens who love the show and who have been in high school productions of it. Some of those kids were just toddlers when it went to Broadway in 1996.

All of this kind of came as a surprise to Rapp, who at first thought the show would be some sort of Downtown cult attraction, such as “Stomp.” He knew it was good, but didn’t think it would appeal to such a wide audience.

Now Rapp, who grew up in the Chicago area, is getting ready to take his own show on the road, once the “Rent” tour closes in early February. He, with the help of a director friend, has compressed his 300-page memoir into a 90-minute show, with musical excerpts from “Rent” and some of his own music that he co-wrote with his guitarist. He is hoping to bring it to Boston next year, and has been promised Asian bookings as a result of “Rent” touring Korea and Japan.

But for now, the prize-winning singer is happy to be fronting for Larson’s rock songs every night in “Rent.”

“There’s nothing I love more than singing with a rock band behind me,” he said.

“Rent” opens Tuesday and runs through Sunday at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence.

Tickets are $68-$38. Call (401) 421-2787 or log on to www.ppacri.org.

cgray@projo.com