ABSTRACT

The opening bars of the West Side Story prologue gently thud as the curtain opens onto a darkened stage. By juxtaposing the intimate details of the rehearsal room of this production with the complicated global production history of West Side Story , this chapter provides insights into the limits and possibilities of teaching about and representing specific US racial histories within a global setting, in this case in the Middle East, especially important as West Side Story continues to be performed around the world. The themes of immigration and insularism were relevant to the Kuwait context of the production, in spite of limited awareness of the particular American history of Latino immigration. There is a danger in colorblind casting in that it can be a superficial fix to theatre’s diversity problem. It is hardly possible to present an amateur production of West Side Story without attending to the global legacy of the 1961 film version.