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SUMMER SEASON 2006
West Side Stories 
8pm, Bowker Auditorium
Tickets: $15; seniors and low income $8;
Five College students with ID and children $5In 2000, the censorship choice and subsequent cancellation of the musical, West Side Story, at Amherst Regional High School ignited a local controversy in Amherst, MA that divided the community and drew national attention to issues of racial representation. West Side Stories takes the heated debate among the Pioneer Valley community and creatively transforms it into an evocative political work of art. Through improvisation and interview theater, students from Amherst Regional High School and Pioneer Valley Performing Arts collaborated in the creation of a work that brings discord and dialogue to life. The result is a multi-dimensional exploration of race and place through music, dance, sketch comedy, satire and drama.
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ASSOCIATED EDUCATIONAL EVENTS
American Theater, Politics, and Identity: A Community Teach-In
Hosted by Cathy Schlund-Vials' American Diversity Class at
The University of Massachusetts
Monday, February 23, 2004
Herter Room 301
American Theater, Politics, and Identity: A Community Teach-In will explore the history of racial, ethnic, and cultural representation in American theater. Using the 1999 cancellation of an Amherst Regional High School production of West Side Story as a jumping off point, the teach-in will investigate how race, ethnicity, and culture get represented in theater. How are stereotypes both reinforced and critiqued? How does theater as an art form yield to, or resist, stagnant identity categories? Are there playwrights and theater forms that more appropriately negotiate the complicated ways that hyphenated Americans self-identify? And, how do community members and audiences interact with and experience theater when its central concern is race or culture? An esteemed panel of scholars, directors, playwrights, and community members will engage in an unprecedented conversation about these issues.
FREE EVENT
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