The word “Bohème” had been used since the Middle Ages as a derogatory French term for Romani people, who were allegedly believed to have come from Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic) and who were thought to celebrate their nomadic, romanticized way of life outside societal norms. The fact that poverty and homelessness stemmed from structural discrimination was obscured precisely in the reinterpretation of the term in the early nineteenth century: “Bohème,” used to describe the inhabitants of Paris’s Latin Quarter, became synonymous with poverty as an art of living and homelessness as a state of mind. Henri Murger depicts this romanticized image in his 1851 work Scènes de la vie de bohème, which later served as the basis for Puccini’s opera, first performed in 1896.

This performance contains depictions of vomiting, as well as related sound effects and staged situations that some audience members may find distressing or unpleasant.

Strobe lighting is used during the performance and may trigger epileptic seizures.