West Side Story West Side Story West Side Story is a musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of
Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble to put on a play. In rehearsing a play for performance the rehabilitative side-effects become manifest: the project develops emotional bravery and self-awareness, social skills and self-confidence, individual dedication as well as the commitment to work as a member of a team. QSE's Prison Project shares many similarities with Prison Shakespeare projects in the United State of America, the best known of which is "Shakespeare Behind Bars", though it was not directly based on any of them. In 2011, the founder of "Shakespeare Behind Bars", Curt Tofteland, visited QSE on a Fulbright Fellowship and traded skills with the facilitators of