TheatreCHS’s most recent show, West Side Story, opened the week of February 22nd. It had five successful runs, including an understudy show, in the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center. Over one hundred actors, crew members, and musicians were involved in the production, and they all played their part in creating a successful and entertaining show.
The name West Side Story might not sound familiar, but the script itself is actually based on one of the most famous plays of all time. A modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the musical West Side Story is set in New York City in the late 1950s. It tells the tragic tale of star-crossed lovers from two warring gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The main characters of the show are Tony [Levi Hofman], Maria [Brianni Aparicio-Suria], Riff [Shay Prichett], Anita [Leela Valdez], and Bernardo [Cyrus Candia]. The leading actors of West Side Story share the burden of conveying the tragedy and violence of the tale. In contrast, the ensemble is made up of vibrant, loud, and often naughty New Yorkers. West Side Story is a show that starts off lighthearted and fun but ends with despair for almost every character. The balance between the main actors and the ensemble is critical in order to achieve this transition, and CHS’s West Side Story did a great job of achieving it.
Levi Hofman, a sophomore who played Tony, spoke to KTR about his performance. “[The most challenging part of the play was] the acting at the end of the play, because it was hard and was vulnerable for me,” he said. “Tony is too innocent and he doesn’t have a good way of dealing with his feelings. He’s too vulnerable, and so when he gets his heart broken, he goes all out.”
Opposite Tony is Bernardo, the older brother of Tony’s lover Maria and the leader of the Sharks, a Puerto Rican street gang. In an interview with Bernardo’s actor, Cyrus Candia, he said that he had to spend a lot of time with the actors who played members of the Sharks in order to perfect his Spanish. He said that the hardest part of the role was “the Rumble, where you had to kill a certain character and match it with the timing of the instrumental.” West Side Story had a live pit orchestra to accompany the production, which meant that actors and musicians had to work together in real time to perform the songs.
While the lead actors were rehearsing heartbreak and fistfights, the ensemble focused mainly on their dancing skills. In an interview with Ruby Hoier, Char Miller, and Dahlia Becker, who all played Jet girls, they said, “We had a really great choreographer who really ran a tight ship. She was inspired by a lot of the original stuff. It was a great experience and she was awesome.” Shania Thorpe, the choreographer, is not a member of the CHS community but was pulled in by director David Becker in order to create showstopping dance and movement scenes.
After five shows of vibrant choreography, emotional love stories, and violent deaths, West Side Story ended its turn as the TheatreCHS annual Spring musical. But don’t worry! As Tony would say, “Something’s coming, something good,” and that is 9 to 5, the next CHS musical opening in April.
