The World Outside the Rehearsal Room

Bringing the story to modern day New York City and making a statement about racism and gang violence is brilliant in the eyes of 2022, but in the eyes of those living in it in 1957 it was a little too close to home. It was their real lives up on stage and it was graphic. Especially for the Puerto Rican community, who spoke out at the time about how this show was a misrepresentation of their community. “The Times reported, some Puerto Ricans on the island and in New York had raised objections — especially to a lyric in the song ‘America’ that rhymed ‘island of tropical breezes’ and ‘island of tropic diseases’” (Schuessler, NYT). They were watching these white men write about their experience as immigrants. And though these men were known as activists and wrote this piece as a statement in the Civil Rights era, their biases show and that’s what causes conflict. It is also known that the story wasn’t always meant to be about Puerto Ricans and the Irish, it started as East Side Story about Catholic and Jew gangs in NYC and then there was talk of moving it to LA and making it about Mexican gangs. They also don’t really incorporate the true sound of “the genius of Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. The gym scene “mambo” is not, rhythmically, a mambo, and the famous rooftop number “America” has the Sharks dancing a Spanish-from-Spain paso doble mishmashed with whitewashed showbiz jazz” (del Valle Schorske, NYT). These communities are so incredibly attached to their music and their style of dance that it’s truly a shame that the creatives did not take advantage of that in its time. 

​

Another huge issue was the casting, “there’s no doubt that West Side Story has long functioned as a vehicle for great performances by Latinx artists, [such as the incredible Chita Rivera] despite the fact that the lead Puerto Rican roles of Maria and Bernardo in major productions have most often gone to white actors in brownface” (del Valle Schorske, NYT). Even in its many revivals these two leads continued to be whitewashed, therefore taking away the already limited opportunity for Latino actors to take on leading roles. It’s funny how a show like this has opened the door for so many Latino performers who wanted a life in the theater, and yet it has also limited us. For years there were no other successful shows for the Latino community, we were expected to play Sharks forever. It was seen as a box that was checked, and if the need arose there could just be a revival and get the next generation of theatrical Latinos their shot at a classic

​

Though not all that West Side Story brought to the industry was bad. It was one of the first shows to comment in real time about the world it was living in.  For example, “when [it] received a glowing review in the New York Times, the Little Rock crisis appeared on the front page. The same was true of Time magazine... featuring Little Rock on the cover and a review of West Side Story on the inside. [It] responded to the Civil Rights Movement by putting race and immigration on center stage” (Oja, artsandculture.com). It did what all theater tries to do, show a reflection of the real world.