Written by Ben Cox – Students in the Brownwood High School Theatre department are hard at work putting on their fall musical, “Newsies.”
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The play is based on the Disney movie starring Christian Bale, will open November 8th and runs the 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Director Shannon Lee explains the gap in the performance schedule. “We’re not doing a Friday show because we have a football game that day.”
Cast before school let out last semester, the actors have had the summer to get acquainted with the show. This was beneficial for the student choreographers Sarah Boyette, Becca Church and dance captain Alyssa Salazar, who are in charge of all the dances. “They had the summer to work on choreographing the show. And they’ve done a phenomenal job” according to Director Shannon Lee.
When asked about letting students choreograph the show, Lee says “I’ve been doing theatre for 25 years, I could choreograph this myself, but this isn’t about my education, it’s about their education.” The tradition started three years ago with Sydney Ivey, who choreographed the last three musicals.
Boyette was the assistant choreographer for last years musical “Lil Abner” under Ivey, and says that she “decided to go for it (lead choreographers job) and then it turned out to be a huge cast!” The 88 member cast list includes a dance team, lead by Salazar, who are responsible for teaching it to the rest of the cast, in turn.
Salazar says that the planning that went into the dances routines was daunting, but a good challenge for the team. “This was a really big deal to us, we said we had to put our heads together” to get it right.
Beccas Church, assistant choreographer, says the balance of other activities and theatre has been worth it. “Finding the time to look at the musical, work with the music, and get it all done has been hard, but it’s been pretty smooth so far.”
The show, while entertaining and certainly memorable, is based on actual events. After ‘The World’ newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer raises the cost of papers to the delivery boys, they go on strike until the price is lowered again.
“It’s this rag-tag bunch of kids that see an injustice and fight to fix it. Not only for themselves, but all the kids in New York. It turns in to the Children’s Crusade, which included textile workers any kid that worked in a workshop. A lot of our child labor laws today came from that crusade.”
Lee says she has wanted to direct this show since the musical first hit Broadway. “I got on an email list for them to notify me as soon as the rights became available, I love it!”
Lee says patrons will leave the theatre feeling full of energy. People will “leave feeling uplifted and kinda feisty, like you can take on the world.”
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