How many times can you see “West Side Story?” If you are what I perceive to be typical, the answer is right around 14,784.

Don’t get me wrong. I grew up in love with the Jets, the Sharks, Maria, Anita and “Something’s Coming.” When I lived in New York in the 1980s, my ambition was to meet each of the four major creative talents behind one of the greatest and most boundary‑busting shows, ever. I never did meet the author of the show’s book, Arthur Laurents, but I managed somehow to share a few minutes of conversation with the other three: Composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and director/choreographer Jerome Robbins, who also came up with the whole idea of a musical transposing the Montagues and Capulets to gangs on New York’s Upper West Side.

(Yep, the snarl of fire escapes, trash cans and sneers in the justly praised movie version of WSS is how things were in 1961 along the now‑Yuppified streets where, today, a 15‑by‑15 studio apartment will run you $2000 a month, if you can find one.)

So, you see, I love this show.

But I haven’t seen a staged version of WSS since the last touring production came through, and for very good reason: After seeing many staged versions and the movies countless times, WSS now lodges in my mind in a perfect state of realization. In my imagination, I see and hear the perfect Tony, Maria, Anita, etc., and I can visualize Robbins’ choreography crystallized on the bodies of every dancer I’ve seen perform the famous ballet sequence. In other words, I’ve seen it, I’ve absorbed it, and I can get in touch with my Inner West Side any time I want.

I bet you can, too. But a lot of you prefer to see endless new stagings of this and other classic shows. So for you WSS fanatics, Scottsdale Desert Stages Theatre opens a new “West Side Story,” Friday night at its locale, 4720 North Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale. (For tickets and more info, call 480‑483‑1664.) Other venues are currently offering such familiar fare as “Oliver!” (Fountain Hills Community Theatre, 11445 North Saguaro Blvd., Fountain Hills; call (480) 837‑9661), “Cinderella,” (Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, 5247 E. Brown Rd., Mesa; call (480) 325‑6700), and that rival to WSS for Most Productions Ever, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” (Hale Center Theatre, 50 W. Page Ave., Gilbert; call (480) 497‑1181).

Mind you, I’m not complaining. Heck, this  endless hunger for that already consumed is the mainstay of the actor‑singer‑dancer’s life, and Dionysus knows our thespians need all the work they can get. I just wonder why it is producers go back again and again to the same shows. It could be that the same old same old is truly what audiences want, but I doubt it. I suspect rather that a barely perceived restlessness for something new is not being met by producers, which is why they’re trotting out all these jukebox musicals featuring the music of this or that pop star, to fill in the gaps.

What we truly need are new book shows that tell riveting stories with newly composed songs and newly choreographed dances. We have plenty of them–or the country is filled with young Bernstein‑Sondheim wannabes, many of them genuinely talented –but it’s difficult to convince theater companies to take a chance on the untested when they can do just as well with the 14,785th “Joseph,” “Oliver!” or “West Side Story.”

Once in a while, a new show does manage to surface. Three years ago, Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre took a chance on a show that had never been to Broadway called “Honk!” The story ofthe ugly duckling, set to charming new songs by unknown songwriters, was a hit for them, and was recently done again here in a short run by Moon Valley Productions.

But we could use more. It would help for everyone–especially theater producers–to remember that, once upon a time, even “West Side Story” was new, so new that producers didn’t want to touch it either.

And look what happened.