scholarly journals Theatrical Illness: Tuberculosis and HIV as Presented by "La Boheme" and "Rent"

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-45
Author(s):  
Jessica Downing
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
La Boheme

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article's first paragraph. "The musical Rent made its Broadway debut on January 25, 1996, a century after the opening performance of the opera, La Boheme. This correlation was a coincidence, though Rent draws significantly on the story of La Boheme, to the extent that a New York Times reviewer deemed it a "contemporary answer to Puccini's 'Boheme."' Each of these productions presents the troubles and tragedies of the bohemian lifestyle in a specific time and place-La Boheme in Paris during the 1830s and Rent in New York City during 1989. Disease, too, is a major theme in each: tuberculosis in La Boheme, and HIV in Rent. Each of the plays illustrate the different effects of the diseases with respect to conceptions of life and death, identity, spiritual promotion, and time. The historical and medical contexts of tuberculosis and HIV manifest in different perceptions of diagnosis and contagion. The extent of influence La Boheme had on Rent calls for a comparison of the representations of these two diseases in their respective historical contexts."

scholarly journals Theatrical Illness: Tuberculosis and HIV as Presented by "La Boheme" and "Rent"

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-45
Author(s):  
Jessica Downing
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
La Boheme

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article's first paragraph. "The musical Rent made its Broadway debut on January 25, 1996, a century after the opening performance of the opera, La Boheme. This correlation was a coincidence, though Rent draws significantly on the story of La Boheme, to the extent that a New York Times reviewer deemed it a "contemporary answer to Puccini's 'Boheme."' Each of these productions presents the troubles and tragedies of the bohemian lifestyle in a specific time and place-La Boheme in Paris during the 1830s and Rent in New York City during 1989. Disease, too, is a major theme in each: tuberculosis in La Boheme, and HIV in Rent. Each of the plays illustrate the different effects of the diseases with respect to conceptions of life and death, identity, spiritual promotion, and time. The historical and medical contexts of tuberculosis and HIV manifest in different perceptions of diagnosis and contagion. The extent of influence La Boheme had on Rent calls for a comparison of the representations of these two diseases in their respective historical contexts."

Neither Tramp Nor Hobo: Images of Unemployment in the Art of the Ashcan School

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 433-450
Author(s):  
Alexis L. Boylan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
York City ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Visual Image ◽  
City Life ◽  
Ashcan School ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
National Reputation

This short notice, entitled “When a ‘Hobo’ Works,” which appeared in the New York Times, July 13, 1912, might seem overwrought to contemporary readers in its definitive nature. The need to delineate work and nonwork, however, was quite serious business for Americans in the first decades of the 20th century. During this period, as evidenced in newspaper and journal articles, legislation, and popular culture, there was growing apprehension about the perceived differences and slippage among the ideas of the tramp, the hobo, the vagrant, the unemployed worker, and the worker. Most of this conversation was directed toward defining work and nonwork for men — specifically for white men. Tramping came to be viewed as an affliction of both mind and body, with writers, politicians, and reformers seeking to define the tramp and then theorizing how to put these newly codified bodies to work.Some of the most complex images of joblessness from this period were produced by the Ashcan school of artists, who frequently portrayed jobless men in their paintings and drawings. The Ashcan school, a group of six realist painters who lived and worked in New York City from 1900 to the First World War, established a national reputation as radicals rebelling against what they argued was a conservative artistic community woefully out of touch with modern American life. Ashcan artists depicted what they claimed to be the realities of the city around them — busy streets, shopgirls, ethnic communities, construction workers, and prostitutes, as well as tramps. John Sloan's The Coffee Line, 1905 (Figure 1), is typical of the kinds of images that Ashcan artists produced. The scene is a snowy winter's night in New York with a band of men in line to get a free cup of coffee. Jobless men are the stars here; unwitting leads in Sloan's slice of New York City life. The painting did much to communicate nationally a visual image of the tramp in New York City; it won honorable mention in 1905 at the Carnegie Institute International Exposition and was then exhibited in Chicago; Spartanburg, South Carolina; Dallas; and Seattle.

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