75 pages • 2 hours read
Arthur Laurents, Stephen SondheimWest Side Story
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Activity
Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.
“Let’s Create a Musical”
Students will write song lyrics for an imaginary musical to learn how songs convey the emotional subtext of a scene.
- After splitting into groups, each group will write down responses to these improv-style prompts:
- Name an emotion
- Describe a relationship between two people
- Describe a problem that needs to be solved
- Name an occupation
- Name a location
Combine your answers to create the skeleton of a scene involving two people.
- Then as a group, spontaneously develop dialogue for the two characters, with one person writing it down.
- Once your group has written 8-10 lines of dialogue, each member should write song lyrics that convey the meaning or emotion behind the conversation. Note: The lyrics should say what the characters are unwilling or unable to say out loud. It might help to put the lyrics to the tune of a familiar song.
Discussion after the activity might explore the connection to scenes in West Side Story that also communicate subtext through lyrics and musical numbers.
Teaching Suggestion: It might help some students understand the function of song and dance in musical theater by discussing whether musical numbers are meant to be taken at face value (i.
