Miss Wendell April 2013

 Also known as Broadway theater  The Black Crook – the first musical  Premiered in New York City on September 12, 1866  It was 5 ½ hours long and ran for 474 performances

 Vaudeville – mixture of dancing, singing, and comedic acts  Variety houses  Musical comedy was very popular in the late 19 th century

 At the turn of the century, better transportation allowed for better travel in and out of the city so musicals were easier to get to in the evening. This made musical theater more popular.  Although, there was competition with the beginning of sound and moving motion pictures.  Musical theater started to ignore plot and focus more on entertainment – big actors/actresses and big musical numbers

 Between the wars:  Started to involve more drama  The musicals would have themes similar to what was going on in the world  Ex. Nazism in Europe during WWII

 1950s – 1970s:  Oklahoma! made Broadway hit its golden age  Musical theater became less popular quickly with the change of culture in the cities – there was a decline of interest in the 1960s and 1970s

 Today:  There are many new musicals on Broadway but there are also many revivals that are put on stage  Broadway has to hire popular actresses and actors to draw more audiences

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 Book written by Arthur Laurents  Music by Leonard Bernstein  Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim  Inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

 Set in the 50s/60s Upper West Side New York City in an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood  Rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks  2 gangs from different ethnic backgrounds  Sharks = Puerto Rican  Jets = Polish American  Tony (Jet) falls in love with Maria (sister to the leader of the Sharks) which creates a forbidden love story

 NYC was the center of gang life  Harlem, The Bronx, and Brooklyn were heavy areas of gang crime  “fighting” gangs took place after the Latinos immigrated to the United States into neighborhoods that were highly populated with European Americans (Italians, Irish, Polish)  As the African American population grew, so did the African American gangs

 As shown in West Side Story there was often armed fighting between adolescent gangs  There was a large Latino population in NYC which created many all minority or multiethnic neighborhoods  There was a high population of Puerto Ricans and African American gangs

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