“From the East Side to the
West Side: The Jewish West Side Story”
Few are aware that West Side Story began as a tale of
warring Catholics and Jews on Manhattan’s East Side, shifting the ethnic focus
quite substantially from the work we now know. Through an investigation of
primary source documents from the Leonard Bernstein archive at the Library of
Congress, and recent oral history interviews with Arthur Laurents, a new and
more complex West Side Story emerges,
reframing this musical as a potent commentary on Jewish identity and experience
in the 1950s.
Co-sponsored by
the Jacob Perlow Event Series, Office of the Dean of Special
Programs.
Free & open to the public