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
Deaf Side Story and Smith continued to explore the nature of their deaf and hearing collaboration as well as the intercultural connections between the Deaf and hearing communities. Deaf Side Story gave Brewer the opportunity to tell a story about two people who fall in love across a cultural-linguistic barrier. Language divided the Jets and the Sharks but brought Tony and Maria together as they began to use the same language. "Deaf Side Story Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical" by Mark Rigney, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, portrays the progress of the production of the musical. Rigney included everything