At some point in every school’s drama director’s career there comes a time when he or she has to stop saying they would like to do West Side Story and just do it. So it was with me at The Louis Armstrong Middle School LAMS in the fall of 1996. Eli Yamin and I had been producing classic Broadway shows at the Magnet school since ’91 and it seemed like the time to “take it on”. West Side Story is one of those gauntlets, if you will, the one show that everybody loves, in theory.

It is usually performed in high school. I’ve seen segmented versions done as young as elementary school and now we were going to present the full production, uncut, to a middle school audience, with middle school actors. God help us.

We had an incredible 5th grader playing Maria, amazing support from the parents and teachers who all had delightful childhood experiences reading West Side Story to help with the production. Rehearsals were devastatingly hard and long; Mr. Yamin often putting in the longest hours rehearsing the magnificent songs and dance numbers. Finally, we were ready and quite literally exhausted. It was at one of these shows that a light went off in both our heads. It was a very chatty audience of 7th graders who were attending. At the critical moment where Tony gets shot… they cheered. I remember sitting in the back of the auditorium looking out over the crowd of 600 13 year-olds and feeling very sad and angry. All of this work, all of what this story means, the message lost, the effort wasted, the time and energy and vision gone. I remember thinking that these kids need stories to come at them at their level, at their place. This has got to change.

A few years later an assistant principal in charge of arts for the school had a little money left over from a Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation gift to the school. She asked what we could do with it. “Write our own show,” I said. “It’s got to be jazz,” Eli said.

That’s one of the ways The Jazz Drama Program was born.

After nine years of writing and producing jazz musicals at the school I handed over the keys to a new drama director. I was glad. Nineteen years of directing shows was a good run.

Then at the beginning of the school year the chorus teacher at LAMS approached me with a somber look on his face. I barely knew him. “They want to do West Side Story,” he said with his head down. After spilling his guts, “Can you say something?” he asked.

I met with the young new drama director who was exuberant, “We’re gonna do West Side Story,” she said. I smiled and answered, “You might want to re-think that.”

by Clifford Carlson on West Side Story production at LAMS.