Why Bohemia

The original working title of this endeavor was Eastside Actors Project. However, it seems like everything is coined “project” these days and Eastside is also a popular descriptor. While seated at a production of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” at Loyola Marymount University, my mind began to wander (as it often does during Shakespeare plays):

This is one of the bard’s later works, written at age 46. This new theater project is starting up as I enter the AARP eligibility years. The wacky rustics in “The Winter’s Tale” are from Bohemia. There are certainly a lot of wacky rustics on the Eastside. I was there watching a performance of a close friend’s son, and was seated next to the head of LMU’s playwriting department. I started networking, and asked if he had talented students who might want to submit a play for a new free theater in Mammoth. It was the first time I had pitched the project.

Back in the mountains, I started doing a little research on the Bohemian artists movement. The whole “starving artist” premise and the idea that creativity thrives in a non-commercial environment completely dovetailed with the impetus behind this new drama club. Courtesy of Wikipedia, I stumbled upon this quote by Gelett Burgess:

To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment—to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind—to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none—to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art—this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy. ... His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one’s self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well. ... What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one’s own path, be one’s own self, live one’s own life.

How’s that for a mission statement?