West Side Story
Remember live theatre? Remember when the big story back in late February was the controversial Ivo Van Hove production of West Side Story on\xa0Broadway? Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a professor of Shakespeare, English, and Gender Studies at Linfield College in Oregon, and a contributing writer to the New York Times and Atlantic magazine, wrote an article for the latter entitled, \u201cWhy West Side Story Abandoned Its Queer Narrative,\u201d\xa0and, in this interview recorded on March 3, 2020, discusses the merits of the van Hove production and his insights into the original narrative. Featuring\xa0the peril of picking one\u2019s prepositional poison; how a dorky 50s musical speaks to modern concerns about racism and police violence against communities of color; the struggle for Tony's body; the problems with "I Feel Pretty;" Jerome Robbins\u2019 lost play; expressing Jewish identity in the 1950s through ethnic minstrelsy; how Arthur Laurents \u201cimproved\u201d on Shakespeare in particularly troubling ways; the rightness of questioning problematic aesthetics; the casting controversy in the recent Broadway production; and, most importantly, the feeling that\xa0when you love something you want to know and discuss everything about it. (Length 34:51)