West Side Story was never meant to represent Puerto Rican communities. Its original creators Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Arthur Laurents admitted they set out to tell a Romeo and Juliet story based in New York City. It was only too convenient that “the Puerto Rican thing,” as Bernstein put it, “had just begun to explode,” and thus provided a community on which the creators could prop their 1957 Broadway musical. White actors were cast in two of the main Puerto Rican roles: George Chakiris as Bernardo and Natalie Wood as Maria.