from shooting. Midway through the film, Robbins was fired from the project, and Wise completed West Side Story on his own. Robbins never directed another film. By the time West Side Story opened in 1961, the entire neighborhood captured on film in the prologue had been completely demolished. Matthew Lopez’s Somewhere takes advantage of the powerful convergence of art, politics and personality that surrounded this West Side neighborhood in the late 1950s. At its heart, Somewhere is about the ties that bind mothers and their sons, families and their homes, artists and their art. Lopez blends humor and heartbreak to create a vivid snapshot of a family in conflict and a city in transition. The Candelarias are bound together by love and sacrifice just as their neighborhood is pulled apart by a vision of progress—progress in the shape of a wrecking ball. —By Danielle Mages Amato, Literary Manager/Dramaturg at the Old Globe
Lincoln Center in 1969, shortly after its completion. The Koch Ballet Theater is at left, Avery Fischer Hall to its right, the Opera House in the rear, Juilliard to the far right, and Fordham University to the far left. Tucked away in the background are the NYCHA towers built to house San Juan Hill’s displaced residents.