'We can't stand by this any more': inside the West Side Story premiere protest
The opening night of Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove’s gritty reimagining of West Side Story on Broadway was always going to be a buzzy affair. The revamp’s premiere had all the trappings of a major Broadway debut – red carpet, glamorous arrivals, box office records – and also a crowd shouting for a lead actor’s dismissal.
“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Ramasar has got to go!” a group of about 100 people, according to police, chanted outside the Broadway Theatre. “Don’t be complicit!” The crowd, largely though not exclusively women of high school and college age, decried the producers’ decision to cast Amar Ramasar as Bernardo, a high-profile supporting role in the show. Ramasar’s involvement in a photo-sharing scandal at the New York City Ballet, which temporarily cost him his job, has produced a stalemate between the show’s producers and protesters over accountability, punishment and rehabilitation in the era of #MeToo.
“Text me those photos/videos!!” Ramasar wrote to his former ballet colleague Chase Finlay, according to a complaint filed in the state supreme court in Manhattan. Finley sent Ramasar sexual photos and video of his then 19-year-old girlfriend, fellow dancer Alexandra Waterbury, while Ramasar reciprocated with explicit images of another female dancer. (Waterbury has sworn an affidavit that the images were recorded without her consent.)
The texts were part of a larger correspondence among male members of the ballet in which women were referred to as “farm animals” and “sluts” and of a toxic culture of impunity, Waterbury alleged in the civil suit brought against them, two other principal dancers, and the New York City Ballet. The ballet dismissed Ramasar in September 2018 (Finley resigned), but was reinstated after a year when an arbitrator declared dismissal too severe. Shortly afterward, he was cast as Bernardo in West Side Story.
The decision to cast Ramasar less than two years after the photo-sharing scandal has struck some as too lenient and irresponsible. “It made me really angry and upset,” said Paige, a New York high school student and aspiring performer who started the weekly protest (opening night was its fifth installment) and runs its social media accounts. “I’m going to be entering this industry, and I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to feel morally right going into it knowing that something like this could happen.” Her sign read: “Men harm others their careers flourish, women speak out their careers end.”
Interactions between protesters and theatergoers on Thursday night seemed deliberately minimal. Unlike at past showings, when the security line spilled down the block, there was no standing area; ticket-holders walked briskly past protesters and security into either the tent-covered red carpet or the theater.
Waterbury stood at the front of the protest, holding a sign directed to the show’s producer, Scott Rudin, who has stood firmly behind Ramasar. In a 60 Minutes special which aired this week, Rudin called Ramasar’s decision to share the photos “really stupid” but defended his role in the production: “Am I supposed to replace him in the show? I’m not gonna do that.” In a statement released last week, the producers said Ramasar’s conduct happened at a different workplace and “he has more than earned our trust”.
“Our goal is not even necessarily to get him fired but to just raise awareness about what’s going on and who’s being complacent, what precedent is being set, and that so many people don’t agree with that precedent,” Waterbury
told the Guardian. “Get rid of him. It’s the easiest fix. It’s simple, it’s justified.”
“I think he’s gone too long without any kind of recognition of his actions, any kind of apology or remorse,” said Megan Rabin, a 20-year-old former ballet dancer from Boston who started an online petition to remove Ramasar from the show, which now has more than 48,000 signatures. “Right now there’s nothing left for him to do and nothing left for the production company to do.”
The protest has received pushback from Alexa Maxwell, 25, Ramasar’s girlfriend of five years, who told the New York Times this week that she was the other woman in photos sent between Ramasar and Finlay. “I am not a victim in this,” she said in a statement; Maxwell called Ramasar’s sharing of the photos a “misstep in judgment” that she has since forgiven.
At the time of his now-reversed firing in 2018, Ramasar wrote on Instagram: “Unfortunately we live in a time where allegations are taken as fact, and actions are made rashly and harshly.” Since then, according to the New York Times, Ramasar has met with cast members multiple times to discuss concerns and last week posted a note on the production’s call board which said: “It breaks my heart that a terrible mistake I made two years ago has caused a situation that is distracting from the work you are all doing here with such selflessness … I want you to know that my past is not my present.”
Some, however, felt professional forgiveness had come too quickly. Ian Fernandez, an 18-year-old from Queens who attended the protest after a friend posted about it on her Instagram story, felt Ramasar had not met severe enough consequences. “I hate it when people who commit sexual acts get away with stuff like that,” he said, citing his own past experience with sexual assault. “He definitely should’ve been fired from the ballet. I’m definitely not comfortable with him being on Broadway.”
In prior performances, a small group of ticket-holders attempted to boo Ramasar after the show, according to several protesters. But no such action was planned for Thursday night, in part because the production had allegedly changed to group bows only. The production is notable for its cohort of young, diverse and largely unestablished talent; 33 performers, including many actors of color, made their Broadway debut on Thursday night.
“I’m a performer myself – I feel sympathy,” said Paige of protesting on opening night. But the protest, she said, “was not against them; this is for them. No one should have to deal with a situation they’ve been put in where I’m sure a lot of them feel uncomfortable but feel like they can’t do or say anything without risking their career.
“I wish you all the best in your opening, but we have to be out here,” she said. “We have to do this, because we can’t stand by this any more.