West Side Story
The idea for West Side Story came when a friend of Jerome Robbins was cast in Romeo and Juliet and asked for advice on how to play the role of Tybalt. Robbins had not read the play since high school, but when he did his first thought was how well the high-stakes romance of the play – the soaring emotions and action-packed plot – would work in a musical. After enlisting his friends Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and a young unknown named Stephen Sondheim, they started on their musical “East Side Story,” with a star-crossed Catholic girl and a Jewish boy at its center. They were not ignited by the idea in the way they had hoped, so they put it aside for six years. When they came back to the work, the idea of a Hell’s Kitchen Puerto Rican/White romance felt closer to them; it was more charged and contemporary.
The idea for West Side Story came when a friend of Jerome Robbins was cast in Romeo and Juliet and asked for advice on how to play the role of Tybalt. Robbins had not read the play since high school, but when he did his first thought was how well the high-stakes romance of the play – the soaring emotions and action-packed plot – would work in a musical. After enlisting his friends Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and a young unknown named Stephen Sondheim, they started on their musical “East Side Story,” with a star-crossed Catholic girl and a Jewish boy at its center. They were not ignited by the idea in the way they had hoped, so they put it aside for six years. When they came back to the work, the idea of a Hell’s Kitchen Puerto Rican/White romance felt closer to them; it was more charged and contemporary.
