Accepted at Cornell University, where he nurtured an early love of theater by obsessively reading plays in his spare time.
Remembered as a prolific stage director and screenwriter, who was credited for the musicals from there books "West Side Story" (1957) and "Gypsy" (1959).
In 1957, Laurents wrote the libretto for "West Side Story." Which was originally conceived by Jerome Robbins as a twist on “Romeo and Juliet”.
Idea for this began with Robbins. In 1949, he asked Laurents to draft a script for a story of conflict between Jews and Italian Catholics on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Took five years, and a rethinking of Manhattan demographics and geography, for the project to proceed.
Reimagined …show more content…
Battle between The Jets (polish-Americans) and The Sharks (Puerto Ricans) over the streets of Manhattan upper west side. Riff, the leader of the jets, runs into Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks and began a battle off in the form of dancing and music. Detective shows up and tells them to get along and “you're making my job harder”. (Page. ) Both gangs attend that dance that might where Tony, riff best friend and former member of The Jets, and Maria, Bernardo's sister, meet = instant love. They were dancing concealing their love, but torn apart by the two gangs. This lead to the rivalry gang agreeing to settle it out with their best man from each gang. Tony and Maria struggle to hide their forbidden love and meet in secret but caught by Bernardo’s girlfriend/Maria’s best friend, Anita. Meanwhile the rumble was about to began. Maria found out about this and demanded Tony to go stop this rumble. The rumble didn’t too well, Bernardo killed Riff and Tony killed Bernardo out of anger. Maria was devastated to figure this out and was going to see Tony at the candy and Soda shop. She was stopped by the detective with some questions. Maria sent Anita tell to Tony she was unable to see him. Anita was then harassed by the Jets and sent the wrong message saying Chino killed Maria. Tony was devastated and went to find Chino. Maria and Tony saw each other on the basketball court and ran to each other. Tony was shot by Chino. Everybody gathered around and realized this go out of