It’s six days before opening night of the Vineyard’s first production of Rent — that’s about 8,000 minutes, for fans of the Broadway musical’s company song Seasons of Love, which poses the question, how do you measure a year, and answers it with the surprisingly catchy refrain, “five-hundred, twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred minutes..”

The energy is high on stage at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard High School. The space has become the East Village, and at this rehearsal actors are spilling out from the second story of the urban set and into the aisles. Dance numbers abound in this pop update on La Bohème, which opens on Thursday and continues through next weekend.

Where Puccini’s opera was about poor young Italian artists fighting tuberculosis, Rent is poor young New York artists and the scourge of their time, HIV/AIDS. Rent has won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony for best musical in 1996 and many other awards, and the Island production is one manifestation of the dream of its creator, Jonathan Larson, to write a rock opera that would “bring musical theatre to the MTV generation.”

The student version has been available only since 2007. It leaves out some of the songs and profanity — this band of bohemians talks frankly about drag queens, drug addicts and people with HIV. But still, several planned high school productions in California, Texas and West Virginia saw parental objections close the show before it opened.

Drama teacher and director Kate Murray has previously produced the musicals A Chorus Line and You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown at the school. “This year we chose to do something more contemporary, more pertinent to students’ lives and something that they could relate to, which obviously changes the appeal for audiences,” she said.

“This is definitely not a show for all ages — it is rated PG-13.

“It’s not that we don’t want to appeal to all audiences, but we feel that the students need to have a well-rounded theatre on the whole,” she said of her program, which has been selected to perform at the 2010 Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland in August.

“This is such a realistic show, and they relate to the issues; these are things that they see and feel every day ... things students deal with, things like, How do I make the right choices? What if I make a wrong choice? What do I do? How do I express myself and do what I want to do and still be a success?”

Rent is about a group of artist friends, many of whom have HIV/AIDS. The play tracks this handful of characters as they go through the struggles involved with having AIDS, falling in love, and trying to survive and create in Alphabet City amid disease and poverty.

“A lot of people hear about Rent and they may not have seen it and they think it’s going to be this hugely controversial thing, but in reality it is a bunch of friends who have developed a community and they are trying to support each other through struggles and [the show] is their relationship,” said Ms. Murray.

“I think the issues in this show empower everyone. I think it empowers the people involved in the production and I think it empowers the audience. My feeling is that it’s empowering because it’s real, it’s true to life and not everything is like Pleasantville and it hasn’t been for a really long time. And you have to be able to, as an artist, express what you feel, you know, and what’s real and what you are experiencing.”

She said it’s been an exceptional experience. The cast includes more then 50 students, with roughly 15 central characters and a large ensemble of smaller and chorus roles. “[The cast and crew] are so connected to this show, because it means so much to them they feel that they are able to express themselves.”

Sarah Swift, who plays Pam, an HIV/AIDS support group member, said, “People are starting to get into their characters a little bit deeper ... and all the other actors who are not leads are also having a lot of fun and getting into it.”

It was true that even the actors who were less trained vocally were singing out loud and clear — always an issue in high school musicals. The expressiveness is not limited to the actors, either. Students are involved in all the aspects of the show — Tessa Parmar, Emily Goldthwait, Mike Patnaude, Ashley Girard, Hudson Klebs, Chris Pitt and Matt Fisher take the backstage roles of cochoreographer, costumer, stage manager, production manager, sound designer, properties manager and lighting designer.

Rykker Maynard, who plays one of the lead roles, said “Some people might have more parts in the play but we could not do the play without everyone, so we definitely do a lot of ensemble work as the whole group, not just as the central cast.”

Why has this particular musical inspired such an effort and won such student support and devotion?

“The kids have to really stop and think about the characters, what they are going through and their relationships and the decisions they make,” said Jan Wightman, musical director. “All these kids are going to go out to New York and various places in the world and they will be faced with these same decisions: Who is my friend? What do I do when this relationship ends? If I get hurt, what happens?”

This production of Rent seems to be a testament to what a group of committed students and faculty can accomplish. “If it were up to me everything would be designed and constructed and created by students,” said Ms. Murray. “Of course that is not always possible because we are obviously teaching the skills as we go.”

How will they measure this time collaborating with their friends? The vibe at this rehearsal suggests that rather than minutes, students willtally this time, as the song says, “in laughter, in strife ... in love.”

The show runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. with a 1 p.m. matinee on Saturday, at the Performing Arts Center.