Chapter 1: West Side Story
This is an excerpt from Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (2023) by Carla Della Gatta. To read it in its full context, click on the link. The book can be purchased on all major sites that sell books and it is FREE to download.
DIVISION: THE WEST SIDE STORY EFFECT
Arguably the single most important cultural work to shape the trajectory of Latinx Shakespeares is West Side Story, a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that offers a backstory for the grudge between the households by transposing them to youth gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the culturally diverse but racially white Jets. With its ethnically based divide, it became the template for cultural division as a primary trope for staging contemporary American Shakespearean productions, shaping not just subsequent iterations of Romeo and Juliet but also many other plays in the Shakespearean canon. The lasting influence of this musical has led to what I term the West Side Story effect: the staging of difference of any kind in Shakespeare (familial, cultural, class) as cultural-linguistic division. (p.29)