This past Friday evening was our 1st official cast meeting, the West Side Story read-thru. It is always fun to see everyone together and imagine how the show will unfold.
Our staging director, Jerry Cohagan shared with the cast a “Touchstone” if you will:
“West Side Story is as old as Shakespeare. It is a story that is continually retold, whether it be in Romeo and Juliet, or whether it be found in today’s voices shouting about building a wall to keep others out or chanting in our own streets that “Black lives matter.” Our world seems so polarized.”
“West Side Story is about rebellion and fierce loyalty, as well. It is about finding a place to belong in a world that views you as “trash”, “depraved” and no better than a “social disease.” It is also about shattering stereotypes and dreaming of a “place for us” on the other side of the cyclone fence.”
“The lives of these characters are ready to blow apart and “bust like a hot water pipe” in a world that has no kindness for the outsider, where even a playground becomes a cage that is hemmed in not only by wire but by a society that is as hard and unforgiving as concrete or brick.
But out of these fragmented lives comes a glimpse of love and forgiveness. From such brokenness comes moments of profound grace.”
“Although West Side Story is ultimately a tragedy of lost possibilities, it is also the eternal belief that through such suffering and loss “someday, somehow, somewhere”… the bricks may begin to crumble.”