Wurtele Thrust Stage / June 16 – Aug 26, 2018 West Side Story based on a conception by JEROME ROBBINS book by ARTHUR LAURENTS music by LEONARD BERNSTEIN lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM directed by JOSEPH HAJ PLAY GUIDE Inside THE PLAY Synopsis, Setting and Characters • 3 About the Source: Romeo and Juliet • 4 Scenes and Songs • 4 Responses to West Side Story • 5 THE AUTHORS About the Authors • 8 In Their Own Words • 11 CULTURAL CONTEXT Juvenile Delinquency in the 1950s • 14 Gang Slang • 15 Fighting Street Clubs: Reports from the Time • 16 Puerto Rico at a Glance • 18 People, Places and Things in the Musical • 20 BUILDING THE PRODUCTION From the Director • 22 From the Creative Team • 24 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 28 Play guides are made possible by Guthrie Theater Play Guide Copyright 2018 DRAMATURG Carla Steen GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves CONTRIBUTOR Carla Steen Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director writing from the publishers. Some materials published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted by permission of their publishers. The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National The Guthrie creates transformative theater experiences that ignite the imagination, Endowment for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation stir the heart, open the mind and build community through the illumination of our by the Minnesota State Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from common humanity. the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY CHARACTERS THE JETS AND THEIR GIRLS Tony, a former leader of the Jets Riff, Tony’s best friend and current leader of the Jets Velma, Riff’s girlfriend Diesel, the Jets’ best fighter Graziella, Diesel’s girlfriend Baby John, the youngest member of the Jets Anybodys, a wannabe member of the Jets Action Gee-Tar Snowboy Clarice Big Deal Minnie A-Rab Photo: The cast of West Side Story (T Charles Erickson) THE SHARKS AND THEIR GIRLS Synopsis Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks Maria, Bernardo’s sister On Manhattan’s West Side during the waning days of summer, rival gangs Anita, Bernardo’s girlfriend prowl the streets. The Jets, a motley crew of “American” youth, find their territory threatened by the Sharks, a gang of newly arrived Puerto Rican Chino, Maria’s intended suitor immigrants. After their most recent skirmish is broken up by the local Pepe Luis cops, the Jets decide to rumble with the Sharks to determine once and Indio Francisca for all who owns the streets. The Jets’ leader Riff asks his best friend Nibbles Consuelo Tony, a former Jet now working in Doc’s drugstore, to back him at the Anxious Rosalia neighborhood dance when he challenges the Sharks’ leader Bernardo. Juano Teresita Tony reluctantly agrees. At the dance, the gangs remain defiantly separated. Among the Sharks THE ADULTS are Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita and his sister Maria, who is attending her Doc, owner of the local first dance in America. In the midst of a mambo, Tony and Maria lock eyes drugstore and Tony’s and dance, reveling in each’s other presence until Bernardo separates employer them. Undeterred, Tony later finds Maria’s apartment, and they pledge Schrank, a plainclothes their love to each other on her fire escape. But a war council between the lieutenant gangs sets the time and place for the all-out rumble, leaving the young lovers caught in a world of prejudice and hate. Krupke, a uniformed sergeant Setting Glad Hand, supervisor of the 1957. The West Side of Manhattan during the last days of summer. Most dance at the gym of the action takes place over the course of two days, from 5 p.m. on the first day to midnight on the second day. GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE PLAY About the Source: Romeo and Juliet Scenes and Songs ACT I Scene 1: The Street “Prologue” ORCHESTRA “Jet Song” RIFF, JETS Scene 2: A Backyard “Something’s Coming” TONY Scene 3: The Bridal Shop Scene 4: The Dance at the Gym “Blues,” “Mambo,” “Cha-Cha,” “Jump” ORCHESTRA “Maria” TONY Scene 5: A Back Alley “Balcony Scene” MARIA, TONY “ America” ANITA, ROSALIA, CONSUELO, FRANCISCA, TERESITA Scene 6: The Drugstore “Cool” RIFF, JETS Scene 7: The Next Day at the Bridal Shop “One Hand, One Heart” TONY, MARIA Photo: Marc Koeck (Tony) and Mia Pinero (Maria) in West Side Story (T Charles Erickson) Scene 8: The Neighborhood “ Tonight” RIFF, BERNARDO, ANITA, TONY, MARIA, JETS, SHARKS In 1949, Jerome Robbins was struck with the idea of putting Romeo and Scene 9: Under the Highway Juliet in his own contemporary world. The story of doomed love is as old as “The Rumble” ORCHESTRA storytelling itself, and in putting their own spin on this tale, Robbins, Laurents, Bernstein and Sondheim were only doing what Shakespeare himself had done ACT II with his source material. Scene 1: Maria’s Bedroom “ I Feel Pretty” MARIA, CONSUELO, Romeo and Juliet is a relatively early work in Shakespeare’s canon, usually ROSALIA, FRANCISCA, TERESITA dated between 1591 and 1596. Speculation varies about when it was first “Ballet Sequence” TONY, MARIA performed, though between 1595 and 1598 seems probable. The play was first “Somewhere” SOPRANO SOLOIST published in 1597 when the first quarto book appeared. Scene 2: Another Back Alley “Gee, Officer Krupke” JETS The primary source for the play was Arthur Brooke’s poem, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which was based on a French version of Scene 3: Maria’s Bedroom the Romeo and Juliet story, Of Two Loves by Pierre Boaistuau, and the Italian “ A Boy Like That”/“I Have a Love” novel Giulietta e Romeo by Matteo Bandello, both of which date back to the ANITA, MARIA 1590s. Scene 4: The Drugstore “Taunting Scene” ORCHESTRA Among the changes and inventions Shakespeare made for his version are creating the character of Mercutio, condensing the action’s timeframe from Scene 5: The Street months to mere days and placing the Capulet-Montague feud front and center “Finale” MARIA, TONY from the first scene. 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY Responses to West Side Story Gang warfare is the material of of reconciling the characters who conception is just beyond “West Side Story,” which opened appear on the stage with their my powers. at the Winter Garden last evening, actual prototypes uptown. and very little of the hideousness Asked to believe that significant has been left out. But the author, All my reading, vividly assisted by tragedy and tender, doomed, not composer and ballet designer are photographs, has led me to think of unliterary romance frequently creative artists. Pooling imagination the members of juvenile gangs as exist among juvenile delinquents, and virtuosity, they have written vicious, senseless, and degraded. I remain, I’m embarrassed to say, a profoundly moving show that is The boys and girls at the Winter incredulous and unstirred. as ugly as the city jungles and also Garden are tough all right, but pathetic, tender and forgiving. … somehow we are asked to believe Wolcott Gibbs, “Hoodlums and that they are simultaneously Heiresses,” The New Yorker, Everything in “West Side Story” is rather winsome and picturesque, October 5, 1957 of a piece. Everything contributes with essentially a high regard to the total impression of wildness, for chastity in the young women If West Side Story is certain to ecstasy and anguish. The astringent who accompany them, and even run a year, why not two? The score has moments of tranquility a certain delicacy and style in commercial limitation is related to and rapture, and occasionally a their employment of the English an artistic one. People who want touch of sardonic humor. And the language. They are capable of to see a Broadway musical do not ballets convey the things that Mr. murder in moments of great stress, particularly crave a “tragedy” of Laurents is inhibited from saying but it is impossible to suspect them social significance in which ugly because the characters are of rape, mugging, perversion, drug sentiments and violence must play so inarticulate. … addiction, torture, or any other a major role. practices that would naturally be The subject is not beautiful. But repugnant to the normal American My sympathies in this case go with what “West Side Story” draws boy. It is probably necessary to this lowbrow opinion. Although out of it is beautiful. For it has a present them in this disinfected I appreciate the show’s merits – searching point of view. light in the theatre, but the whole and sat in a theatre echoing with Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: The Jungles of the City,” The New York Photo: The cast of West Side Story (T Charles Erickson) Times, September 27, 1957 My opinions of “West Side Story” are, I have to admit, very mixed. The plot, though certainly racking, seems to me strangely empty of real emotional content. Partly, this may be due to the fact that Shakespeare’s ideas of what is permissible in the way of dramatic coincidence aren’t easy to accept today, and it is hard to escape a feeling of patness and contrivance in the way each fatal encounter is arranged.