The West Side Story Project

A community engagement project

(Pittsfield, MA) Barrington Stage Company (BSC), the award-winning theatre in the Berkshires, under the leadership of Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, announces its newest community engagement initiative, the West Side Story Project. In anticipation of BSC’s upcoming Mainstage production of West Side Story, Barrington Stage has formed a

Youth Council comprised of local teenagers from Berkshire County who show leadership potential but have not yet had the opportunity to demonstrate their leadership skills.

“The aim of this project is to use the events in this groundbreaking musical as a basis for discussion with local youth. By using three songs in West Side Story – “Officer Krupke”, “America” and “The Jet Song”, we will be identifying and exploring some of the challenges the youth face today,” said Artistic Director Julianne Boyd.

With the song “Officer Krupke,” BSC’s Youth Council is focusing on the relationship between the youth and authority figures. The first relationship explored was with the Pittsfield police. On Wednesday, (May 30), Police Chief Michael S. Wynn and Pittsfield Police Officers Detective Ignacio (Iggy) Matos, Detective Jim Losaw, and Officer Chris Colello worked with the students on a series of role reversal exercises. The two groups gained a greater understanding of each other’s perspectives through improvisations in which the students played the role of the police and vice versa. This exchange of experiences and ideas broke down barriers between the youth and police as both groups gained a better understanding of the other. The Youth Council will next be inviting teachers and local shopowners in for the next phase of role reversal exercises and improvisations.

Barrington Stage will use the song “America,” originally about the experience of Puerto Rican immigrants in 1950s, as a starting point for examining the challenges facing the Latinx youth in Pittsfield today, with the goal that participants will share their experiences of the lack of understanding and misconceptions about their culture. These experiences will become the basis for their own version of “America” wherein we will partner with Isadora Acqui and the Berkshire Children and Family Services (BCFS) to use Latin dance to connect to our participants.

The third part of the project, based on “The Jet Song,” aims to tackle gang prevention, a problem in our community that also comes directly from West Side Story. (This sentence is a bit awkward – can this wait until Monday?—I have language about the Jet Song and the workshop in my application to the Barr. Also, I thought we were going to mention the work with the guy from the Bronx)

Youth council members include Chante Wellington, Dumars Harrison, Jaeda Wade, Trevon Taylor, Nicholas Howe, Dalton Haskins, Aleah Tarjick, Crystal Moore, Warren Dews III, Bre Lyttle, and Anthony Valerio.

Barrington Stage is partnering with Ann Gallo of UBU Theater (Tyringham, MA), Pittsfield Community Connection, under the auspices of Berkshire Children and Family Services, The Boys and Girls Club of Pittsfield, and The Pittsfield Public Schools on this community driven initiative.

The West Side Story Project is sponsored in part through a generous gift from the Berkshire Bank Foundation.

ABOUT BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY

Barrington Stage Company is a professional award-winning Equity regional theatre located in the heart of the Berkshires, in Pittsfield, MA. It was co-founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Julianne Boyd and has a three-fold mission: to present top-notch, compelling work; to develop new plays and musicals; and to find fresh, bold ways of bringing new audiences into the theatre—especially young people. Barrington Stage garnered national attention in 2004 when it premiered William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s musical hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which later transferred to Broadway, where it won two Tony Awards. In 2009, BSC premiered Mark St. Germain’s Freud’s Last Session which later moved Off Broadway and played for two years. St. Germain’s Becoming Dr. Ruth (which premiered at BSC as Dr. Ruth, All the Way in 2012) played Off Broadway at the Westside Theatre in 2013. BSC’s all-time record-breaking musical, On the Town, was originally produced at BSC in 2013. In 2014, it opened on Broadway where it was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Musical Revival. In 2016, Barrington Stage swept the first Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards by winning 20 out of the 25 awards. In 2016, BSC produced three World Premieres: Presto Change-O, Broadway Bounty Hunter, and American Son, which won the Laurents/Hatcher Award for Best New Play. In 2017, BSC won the Best of the Berkshires Reader’s Choice for Best Live Theatre and produced the much-lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company, starring Aaron Tveit.