Thoughts on BoHo L.A.

With the successful L.A. runs this fall of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and Jonathan Larson’s “Rent,” the age-old question arises: What is bohemia, and why do we find it so alluring? Even more intriguingly: Who are the bohemians of L.A.? What is their story? Shouldn’t the lively artistic spirit of the Big Orange be captured in its own hit singing-and-dancing show?

“Show?” a new voice keens. “Why not a CD-ROM, running shoe or men’s fragrance even: ‘Loftz,’ ‘A Man Named Horst,’ or the edgy, geographically forbidden ‘405 . . . East’?” That’s the problem with nonprofit organizations in L.A. You always end up having some odd, excitable woman from Mattel on your board . . . whose money talks. And so you see, in Southern California, how the forces of cheesiness always win. . . .

But not today, dammit. (Electric guitar up! Dramatic light change! Dancers kick through the scenery!) Not today! “Not toda-a-ay!” If only Jonathan Larson were here to set that lyric to a thrilling rock ascension. Because then we’d feel it: the joyous yawp that is the essence of La Vie Boheme--to dance, to sing, to show our corporate sponsors the door! To thumb our noses at the Man (or woman) who wants our “Rent”!

Are the enemies of L.A. bohemia that cut-and-dried, though? For that matter, are our heroes? After all this is not the Big Apple, but a ground-shifting, fair weather-friend burg my musician-husband Mike Miller once described to me as the Receding Carrot. What is art’s passionate cause here, its tribal uniform, its unique colorful neighborhood? For Rodolpho to romance Mimi, he needs candles, violins, atmosphere.

Well, therein is the challenge. Sprawled out as it is, Los Angeles has no Latin Quarter, no Left Bank, no East Village. When we think of bohemian activity, no unifying center, park, street or block comes to mind. I have sometimes thought, while driving back and forth between downtown and Hollywood, that the 101 is kind of a creative freeway. But that won’t do.

What we do have are ZIP Codes with unique creative histories. While by no means comprehensive, I humbly offer these points of departure for our next generation of musical dreamers:

* Downtown L.A. By tradition, downtown L.A. has always been first in the name of High Art. And, until the very early ‘90s, it was rocking: We had the Atomic Cafe, Gorky’s, LACE, the Museum of Neon Art, the original LATC in all its scandalous people- exposing- themselves- in- front- of- you glory. There were even such neo-yuppie, Less Than Zero-ish nightclubs as the Stock Exchange (glittery-eyed USC blonds wearing sorority frocks with ironic distance) and Flaming Colossus (Eurotrash in chinoiserie and scary painted-on Cocteau eyebrows).

Do you see a musical here? Something very slick, very weird, very--do you follow me on this . . . Bob Fosse? Sadly, since then most of these places have closed, moved north or drastically reduced their operations. What we are left with, in downtown, is a burned-out pit flocked with large numbers of what we will euphemistically refer to as street people.

Street people have been a great boon to Broadway, of course. As seen in “Rent,” the Times Square-inspired “The Life” and even “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk,” New York street people are all colorful costuming, irrepressible enthusiasm, phenomenal dancing. By contrast, our own downtown homeless feel a bit too low-energy to be featured in musical theater--too grayish, too Brecht. It could be just perception, though. No doubt some intrepid L.A. show-balladeer is just waiting to prove us wrong.

* CalArts. Can’t you just see the marquee at the Wiltern? “Valencia!” (You scoff, but at the Lincoln Center a few years ago, there was a run on Hunchback of Notre Dame-inspired musicals. Two proposed titles: “That Darn Bellringer” and “Hunch!”)

I used to think CalArts would be the very nexus of boogaloo-ing young bohemianhood--our very own version of “Fame” high school. Then I went to speak at a graduate seminar on Critical Writing. I yakked on and on, to pale faces (and orange haircuts and black leggings) ever more disinterested, frozen and aloof. It gradually dawned on me that my making a modest living in writing struck them not as enviable and amazing but kind of feeble and sad and . . . middle-class.

“And how are you conceptual art critics planning to support yourselves after graduation?” I asked nicely.

She had a white pageboy, black turtleneck and was all of 22. She was from Finland. “In my cohntry,” the girl responded tonelessly, “I get grahntz for my werk.” “Which is?” Without missing a beat, she said: “I et a boook.” Ms. Finland would sit in an art gallery and eat a book.

What a great country America is, I suddenly thought, that we might actually deny twentysomethings money to do that. Are you hearing the complex, unhummable strains of Sondheim? Or something? I am.

* Silver Lake. The story: We follow the lives of four USC film students living in a bungalow in Atwater. A friend of a friend of a celeb, one gets a terrific break at age 24. Everyone else falls into a depression that lasts into their 40s.

* Westside Story. For color, for fun, for sullen-looking Bolivian flutists in perky hats, no area puts it all together like Santa Monica. Although a musical based on Westside bohemian life would be called not “Rent” but “Rent Control.” And all the bohemians would be old. Once you get one of those $450-a-month apartments near the beach, decades go by as you drink nonfat decaf latte and free-associate through your Artist’s Way morning pages. To maybe a dreamy Philip Glass score.

Essential to a bohemian plot line is the wealthy patron who swirls darkly into the room, bearing fur coats and gifts and romantic entanglement. You can’t have a romantic entanglement with the L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs. If one did set the action in a painter’s studio in Venice, two words: Dennis Hopper. Don’t you think? The danger, the appeal, the lizardy allure! Picture Rodney Gilfrey striding onstage wearing a plastic Dennis Hopper head. Suddenly the feel becomes very Tosca.

These are not directives, just thoughts. Composers? Fire up your Macs. We’re ready, and waiting.