Arianne and I went on a tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library this afternoon, where, while perusing their current exhibit (Shakespeare in American Life), I discovered what may be the awesomest fact of all time!
It turns out that when Leonard Bernstein was originally working on his musical version of Romeo and Juliet, he envisioned it as EAST Side Story, with the gangs being Jewish and Italian!! In fact, in his original conception of the main parts of each scene, for the second scene he had written, "ball or seder or motzi shabbat" with motzi shabbat written in Hebrew/Yiddish letters! How cool is that? And imagine what a different movie that would have been . . .
5 comments:
*giggle* I really really want to see East Side Story.
Arianne posited that perhaps it was originally "When you're a Jew, you're a Jew all the way."
that just blew my mind. the jewish gang could have been like ten Fonzies :-)
(I know he was supposed to be italian...but he wasn't!)
I LOVE Fonzie. Probably you already know that I had a pet mouse called Fonzie when I was in college.
I did not! That's fabulous :-)
The dorky theater group I moved here with did a play once, and the backing band called themselves "The Black Fonzies" because they were so *edgy*. Sigh.
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