From Calais, with Love

West Side Story runs on timeless themes than can be tweaked and edited to suit a modern day audience. With our version we have maintained the most prominent themes of love, hate,tragedy and rivalry and fused them with a topic relevant to our society today – The Refugee Crisis. 

As the topic is so current to our society today audiences of various ages can relate in some way, shape or form and the relevance of the topic modernises our version. With constant news reports and coverage surrounding our topic advertising will be more successful and audiences will be able to make emotional connections to the story based on the reports they see daily. The topic creates a platform for us to present an eye opening, heart-warming and modern insight to a current event and hopefully through our remake we will change people’s ideas and perceptions of The Refugee Crisis. 

We decided to present “From Calais, with Love” as a weekly series on ITV that consisted of one season comprised of 8 episodes. Episodes 7 and 8 would be linked with episode 8 being the continuation of episode 7. We decided to structure our presentation this way as in today’s society television series and box sets have become increasingly popular and are accessible to a wide range of diverse audiences. With the development of Sky On Demand and ITV Catch-up TV even if viewers miss an episode they are able to catch-up and continue following the series. This means we are more likely to receive viewers and a buzz will develop around our show. 

Our choice of characters also follows not only the themes of west side story but the relevance of the topic. We kept the lead roles young so a youthful audience could easily connect with the story line and themes. Our rivalry lies between the two lovers and the state authorities within the UK. Despite Amira’s countless efforts and Trey’s extensive work with his various connections the two failed to get Amira into the country and this put a strain on their relationship. This is a common predicament hundreds of refugees face every day and adds a real and true element to our story. The UK Parliament officials will be represented as a menacing and powerful group that have their own battles and issues to think of when it comes to The Refugee Crisis. 

Movement material will be significantly more modern in comparison to the original West Side Story due to the development of technique and birth of various new dance styles over the years. “From Calais, with Love” incorporates a diverse range of current popular dance cultures such as hip hop and commercial whilst fusing these with culturally appropriate dance styles originating from Syria and other areas. Our choreographic ability today will allow us to successfully fuse styles and develop a technical entertaining performance that will engage audiences throughout the series’ duration.