The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.
We raise our glass, you bet your ass, to La Vie Boheme.
So that scene was in the play.
Credit: Joan Marcus
ARONSON:From the beginning of our collaboration, Jonathan thoughtRentwould be “our generation’sHair.
In particular, Claude’s song Manchester England, England, where he starts dropping all those names.
La Vie Boheme was one of those.
JOAN MARCUS
I was completely knocked out immediately.
I heard a real celebration of life, individuality, who you are.
I just love the re-embracing of those words that are used as epithets.
And then my second thought was, I don’t know what half these things mean.
RUBIN-VEGA:I actually knew a lot of the references.
It was talking to a multicultural part of me.
[The clubs and such mentioned] were actual places in history that I had experiential knowledge of.
That’s why I got hired.
I didn’t get hired because I was the best.
I got hired because I knew exactly what it was that they were talking about.
RAPP:I was familiar with almost of all them.
I remember 8BC was one I needed to discover for myself.
There was a whole packet that was put together by our dramaturg and Michael Greif and Jonathan.
FREDI WALKER-BROWNE (Joanne Jefferson):Jonathan gave us the references.
He wrote it all out.
He had a whole backstory Bible for us.
I still have that somewhere.
It was the backstories of all the characters, all the references in La Vie Boheme.
GREIF:I Should Tell You was the Act One finale, when I first looked at the script.
GREIF:There were many, many more verses that I can’t even recall.
WEIL:Theres a lost second extra verse that I am in possession of.
They werent as graphic or explicit.
WEIL:There was a reference to Nirvana.
It was just another list of things.
As Mark starts to sing and dance, the others follow.
GREIF:The concept was very much the Last Supper.
Our wonderful choreographer Marlies Yearby found a real joy in just the presentational nature of that first image.
RUBIN-VEGA:That’s so Michael’s brand, constructing from this metal or industrial kind of place.
It wasn’t about the furniture; it was about us and that was very freeing.
WALKER-BROWNE:Its as much exposition as it is anything else.
You have so much going on in the story that is revealed through that song.
GREIF:A lot of the initial staging was all about making points for Benny’s benefit.
YEARBY:The gesture dance at the top of the song Ive named The Dis Dance.”
It’s inspired by the work of graffiti artist Jean Basquiat and the Dada Movement.
It’s something they all do.
Everybody knows it sort of like the hustle.
The first thing is to communicate that we’re going to do the dis dance to Benny.
WALKER-BROWNE:It feels organic and spontaneous, but it is so structured and it was so deliberate.
But thats brilliant to me.
It felt so completely real.
I didn’t want perfection.
It was his opportunity to really let go and show off a little.
A lot of that staging came out of his really wonderful and vivid imagination.
I turned to Marlies and I was like, Can you help me out here?
And she’s like, No, you do you.
If you want me to be a spaz, I’ll be a spaz.
YEARBY:I did not want the perfect dancing body.
Anthonys quirkiness and his relationship to rhythm was very off beat naturally.
I capitalized on that and pulled the choreography to that place.
But once we were all up on the tables, that was all sort of freestyle.
YEARBY:Dancing on the table is a given.
It’s a rebellion.
Dancing on the table in a cafe definitely pushes the boundaries of the very conservative.
You are not being conservative if you’re jumping up on the table and dancing.
HEREDIA:She didn’t impose a movement on you.
She would say, “How does this make you feel?
Tell me what this sound makes you do.
As the number builds, it devolves into even more pointedly lewd gestures.
The group climbs onto the table, often breaking into pairs doing distinctive choreographic interludes.
GREIF:A lot of that staging came from the imaginations of that spectacular original company.
YEARBY:Improvisation is at the base of my work.
I also thought that approach worked for the character too.
It didn’t make sense to me that this character would have been some kickass dancer.
HEREDIA:Part of it was interpreting the song almost literally.
It felt like a trisket, a trasket schoolyard, hand-clapping game.
Both Daphne and I got on the table.
We played a mirror game initially with each other, when we first started playing with it.
It just turned into that [hand-clapping] sequence.
RUBIN-VEGA:Michael asked me to tone down the lewd gestures.
I’m like, “That’s just how I feel inside.”
RAPP:Some of the lewd gestures got more elaborate in future iterations.
In our original thing, it wasn’t a lot of that.
It was more restrained in that it was more about the exuberance and the joyful nature of it.
YEARBY:I loved Jesse’s feet.
He loved to slip and slide around on his feet.
He reminded me of James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Jackie Wilson.
His feet were unique, and I pulled that out every time.
HEREDIA:The one thing you saw in that number is that we trusted each other.
RAPP:When we were in the thick of our eight-show-a-week grind, that number was the hardest physically.
If we were at all tired, it was a bear.
It never stopped us from giving 100 percent, but it was like a mountain to climb.
PASCAL:We all knew that this was the end of the act.
Let’s just blow this out, and then we get a nice 20-minute break.
I was drawing from Max, who was an incredible vogue-er.
Then, Michael Greif recommendedParis Is Burningto me.
Its the one time I allowed Angel to actually enjoy being in the spotlight.
Jonathan and I were really familiar with Act Up and with a lot of other AIDS organization’s protests.
It was very easy to move that into the language of the musical.
RAPP:That became such an iconic image of the cast.
It could be as iconic as f— but the fact that that happened is what made it.
Its the most powerful image in the show.
I work with a lot of young actors now, and many of them find their activism throughRent.
GREIF:It’s about community.
HEREDIA:When you sing that song in a group, you know that you are not alone.
It’s a victory chant.
It’s solidarity chanting, We the freaks, and it’s all right to be that.
WALKER-BROWNE:I use, The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation, constantly.
Because it’s true, creation is such an act of love.
I can now in hindsight look back and understand it’s such a joyous, fun number to watch.
And to remember that this moment right now is the one that matters the most.
