Friendly rivals

Within the breathtakingly talented cast of Lyric's season-ending West Side Story, Yurel Echezarreta (Bernardo, leader of the Sharks) and Kyle Coffman (A-Rab, a Jet) have some astonishing history in common: Both artists appeared not only in the epic 2021 film version of the title, but also in the critically acclaimed 2009 Broadway revival of the show. We spoke with them about their previous experiences with the musical, hanging out with Steven Spielberg, and what it's been like to bring the work to life on Lyric's stage.

LYRIC
Thanks for finding some time to talk. To get started, how are things going with the show?

KYLE
When you have a cast like we have now, and such a great creative team, it's a great piece to be a part of. I'm hard pressed to find anything else that's quite as satisfying as this production.

YUREL
I agree. This cast—it feels like with each puzzle piece of us that came together, it leveled up. It's like we all plug in to create this big supercharged production of West Side Story. One big cohesive unit. That's how it feels for me.

LYRIC
There's something about the Jerome Robbins choreography that is so electric.

KYLE
What's so interesting about West Side Story is how the choreography and the music and the book—it's all one thing. [Laurents, Bernstein, Sondheim, and Robbins] all wrote it together, and they made it so it was so cohesive. In a way, you can't have one without the other and still have the same show. It's not like they came up with all the songs and hired a choreographer and then said, put some dance steps to this. It's all one thing together. And as a performer, you really feel that when you're doing the piece. It's like everything's there to help you. It's not just shapes for shapes' sake — we're actually telling a story here. And as an artist, there's nothing better than that.

YUREL
I agree. I think as humans, we thrive on story. We need story. We were around that campfire being like, Look at that fire we just made. Now let's talk about the lion that just chased me. Often, dance can become so abstract. You're just seeing bodies move–and there's a pleasure in that. But for you to really get intrigued as a human and for the spirit to be involved, we need to understand that there's something more complex happening and being told. And Jerome Robbins was all about that — creating that narrative behind the movement.

LYRIC
You've done the show a number of other times — was the choreography familiar to you?

YUREL
I've played Bernardo twice before, but this is my first time performing the original Bernardo choreography. The choreography is very intricate and rhythmic and syncopated and dynamic. And with each pass, there's always an extra layer you can add. It's leveling up the depth of what you've got as a performer because there's so much depth in the material.

KYLE
Still fresh. In terms of pure artistic vision, I don't think you can touch it. Every time I get to do this choreography, I'm just always wowed with a renewed appreciation for what Robbins did.

LYRIC
You both made your Broadway debuts in the 2009 revival. I'd like to know more about that. It seems impossibly long ago.

KYLE
Yeah, you're not the only one.

YUREL
You know, funnily enough, you would assume that it was like this whole dream experience. For me, it was very bittersweet. There were aspects of it that were legendary. I mean, we were being directed by Arthur Laurents, the man who wrote the story. Like, are you kidding me? 90 years old. Like, what? However, the backstage energy wasn't always nice. What got me through that production was that I loved the music. I was able to just tap into the art of the show, and that was what brought me the joy.

KYLE
It was the first musical I'd ever done. I came from a dance background. And I still got to dance, and I got to do amazing choreography, but I also got to use my voice for the first time on stage. We learned choreography from someone who actually learned it from Jerome Robbins. Getting to work with Arthur gave us perspective on what he and they were going through and thinking about when they were writing the show in the '50s, and we found it was all still relevant, back in 2009. And of course, it's almost even more relevant now.

LYRIC
One aspect of that production that gets talked about is the use of Spanish language by the Sharks.

KYLE
We had Lin-Manuel Miranda there, kind of translating the Spanish lyrics, because especially in the early versions, they spoke and sang completely in Spanish. There were moments that were definitely trying and difficult. But I would agree with Yurel that as soon as the curtain would come up and the prologue music would start, there was always something like, Man, I can't believe I get to hear this music and dance with these people and tell this story. And honestly, that feeling never leaves me, no matter what version of the show I'm doing.

LYRIC
The soundtrack won a Grammy. Did you take part in the recording?

YUREL
Technically, yes.

KYLE
You have to start putting that in our bio.

YUREL
My goodness. And we're Oscar nominated for the film.

LYRIC
You two really bring some special perspective to the show.

KYLE
I have this memory that I'll never forget. We were doing the ballet one day, and we all walk out and sing, and Yurel was on the other side of me, directly opposite the studio, and I could just see him right in front of me, and I could feel the power of the vocals, and I was like, Oh, this is something different. So I don't know if I ever told you that, but that was one of my distinct memories from week one.

YUREL
Wow. I had no idea. That's really cool. Still today, dancers who saw the production say, That was so clean. That was such a powerful production because the dancers were really unified.

LYRIC
Is it a challenge to refresh the work you've done before?

KYLE
One of the cool things about working on different productions with different choreographers and different directors who've had different experiences is that you take a little bit from each one. So we've learned new things from Josh [revival choreographer Joshua Bergasse]. We kind of know, all right, on this part of the music, we go here, we do this move, whatever. But Josh will have a new perspective — of how he did it, or the version that he learned from Alan Johnson, who learned from Jerome Robbins.

YUREL
What's cool with Josh is that, for me, stepping into Bernardo and doing that choreography, he trusts we're at a certain level. But he's also open and willing to feel out a few little detail changes here and there. To allow us to bring what is suited to our bodies into it in smaller ways — in ways that I think enhance it.

LYRIC
Has it been different to work on a production of this scale?

KYLE
We have a full backing chorus, which is amazing.

YUREL
Yeah, it is grand. Massive. I don't think I've ever seen such a large number of people do "Dance at the Gym." We see that number start and Bernardo enters and I'm like, Whoa, this is a beast. It's bigger than Broadway. It's exciting because that means we have to fill all that space with our magic.

LYRIC
People must ask you all the time about being in the 2021 movie. Did you hang out with Spielberg?

KYLE
Oh, yeah.

LYRIC
Seriously?

KYLE
He was there very early. At the audition, I was kind of intimidated when I opened the door and saw all the people sitting behind the table — Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner and the producers. But it was one of the nicest audition environments I've ever been in. They were so kind and welcoming and put us all at ease.

YUREL
We would walk onto the set, and he would shake our hand, say our names. He knew all of our names. He didn't need to know all of our names. And he had this childlike exuberance doing his job. He would film something that he got really excited about, and he would wave us all over under the director's tent and show us.

KYLE
I think he was there from the very beginning of the concept. He had storyboarded so many of the shots ahead of time. And he told the story that the original Broadway cast West Side Story vinyl was the first non-classical music that his parents brought home. He heard that soundtrack when he was like six or seven, and he said he was obsessed with it, and he would listen to it all the time and imagine what was going on. So it had been his dream to tell this story since he was a little kid.

YUREL
He'd be talking about Jaws. We'd be like, I'm sorry, what is going on with our life right now? He was very generous of spirit, and you could say, You don't have to be. You're you. But he was. So listen up, y'all: There's no one who has an excuse to not be generous and humble because Mr. Spielberg was very much those things.

KYLE
Preach. Another cool thing was that a lot of us had a lot of history together as performers, because they drew from the New York theater world. So there was a real sense of family going into it. I mean, the Sharks and the Jets rented this big farmhouse for a weekend upstate before we started filming. And it was one of the best weekends of my life. We played crazy games, swam, cooked food, had nerf gun battles. We were all one nucleus, thinking, Man, we're so lucky we get to experience this.

YUREL
Doing "America" was something I will never forget. The sun was beaming. There was not a cloud in the sky. It was August, New York City. And you'd think that all you'd need is the full sun in the sky for lighting. For film? No, they need stadium-style lighting from every corner of the block. And you felt the heat of the sun, the actual literal sun, just beaming on you. And between each take, they had a whole team of hair and makeup, bringing umbrellas, bringing misters. They took over laundromats, where we would just go in and cool off. And there were paparazzi shooting us between shots. They would dress the buildings, they would change up the storefronts, there were the authentic cars, there were so many extras. It was this conglomeration of real energy just exploding from these few city blocks. And it was epic, epic, epic.

LYRIC
Amazing. And after all the time you have spent with this work, you don't lose your energy for it?

KYLE
Yurel and I have done this show numerous times, but there's always more to discover. I don't know how to frame it, really, but that's what separates the kid's table from the big table — those fine little nuances. You could probably get away with not doing them, but if you have the thought to do them, the audience can really see it. It goes from being really good to being mind-blowing.

YUREL
You hit this position, and then you hit this position, and then you turn and you do this. But where is that coming from? I keep flashing in my mind to this part at the end of the mambo with me and Anita. When you do a movement like that, you're literally playing with physics, with each other. I feel Anita's back. She feels mine. We become one unit at one time. Are we rotating? Are we orbiting each other? Do we feel the same centrifugal force within our arms? And that requires us unifying, linking into one brain for a moment. There's a way you could do it where you're not doing that, and people will think, Yeah, that's lovely. Or they're going to be like, Whoa, look at how they're rotating. Like planetary objects. That's the kind of depth I'm talking about.