b'WELCOME TO WEST SIDE STORY!A message from Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan, Director.TheresastorythattheoriginalproductionteamofWestSide StoryinvitedastreetgangtoopeningnightonBroadwayin 1957, as a thank you for the gang serving as cultural consultants about gang life for the production. At intermission, after the end of Act I and its senseless, fatal violence, the gang rose without a word and walked out of the theatre. In an uncharacteristically empathetic gesture, choreographer Jerome Robbins got up and ranafterthem,apologizingandaskingiftheteamhaddone something wrong. The gangs leader looked at his fellows with an odd expression, and turning back to Robbins, simply shrugged, and said, We thought that was the end. This simple declaration speaks volumes to the stark unrest affecting the marginalized of 1950s New York.When West Side opened, it could not have felt more timely for New York City. Gang violence was a daily headline. Tensions were peakingregardingchangingimmigrationandmigrationlaws followingWorldWarII.Theindustrialcomplexwasleavingthe city for the periphery, taking job opportunities and futures with it. Studies show a postwar rise in domestic violence, attributed to soldiers who returned home listless and traumatized. Is it any surprisethenthat,burdenedwithstrifeathome,abandoned byemployers,shuffledaroundbychangingcommunities,the unsettled, underprivileged youth of the city should be driven into the open, protective, arms of the fighting street gang?Robbins, his collaborators, the theatrical titans Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Hal Prince, along with newcomer Stephen Sondheim, wanted to encapsulate the frustration and unrest of New Yorks youth on the stage. Through innovative choreography and one of the most memorable scores in musical theatre history, theteamembodiedthestifling,violent,chaoticworldofthe New York street gang with radioactive success. It was, in a word, revolutionary. And yet, it was a show that shouldnt have, and almost didnt, make it off the ground. The choreography was deemed too inventive, the book too crude (right up to the line of four-letter words, unheard of in the era) -even the now-iconic score was called unhummable. What, then, with all its complexities, heavy'