Have you ever heard about a movie for a long time but have never seen it? I have heard about the movie Newsies a countless amount of times, but I have never seen it. I don’t even recall it being in the movie theater, which as I learned in an interview with Steve Fickinger, is probably because the movie wasn’t in theaters very long at all. Which in turn explains why the movie wasn’t considered to be successful, despite the “cult” following it has. Which brings us back to how I heard about the movie a gazillion times. Which brings us back to doe. Just kidding. For those unfamiliar with Steve Fickinger, he is the VP of Creative Development and Licensing for NEWSIES on Broadway. Here’s a brief blurb with a description of Newsies.
Set in New York City at the turn of the century, Newsies is the rousing tale of Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a ragged band of teenaged ‘newsies,’ who dreams only of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike for what’s right.
Newsies is inspired by the real-life ‘Newsboy Strike of 1899,’ when newsboy Kid Blink led a band of orphan and runaway newsies on a two-week-long action against Pulitzer, Hearst and other powerful newspaper publishers.
The Broadway company of Newsies will feature Jeremy Jordan (Bonnie & Clyde) as Jack Kelly, John Dossett (2003 revival of Gypsy) as Joseph Pulitzer, Kara Lindsay (Little House on the Prairie) as Katherine Plumber, Capathia Jenkins (Caroline, or Change) as Medda, Ben Fankhauser (Spring Awakening national tour) as Davey, Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Mary Poppins) as Crutchie, and Lewis Grosso (Mary Poppins), and Matthew Schechter (Elf) alternating the role of Les. Dossett, Lindsay, Fankhauser and Keenan-Bolger will all reprise the roles they created in the Paper Mill Playhouse production last fall.
The ensemble of Newsies will feature Aaron J. Albano, Mark Aldrich, Tommy Bracco, John E. Brady, Ryan Breslin, Kevin Carolan, Caitlyn Caughell, Kyle Coffman, Mike Faist, Michael Fatica, Julie Foldesi, Garett Hawe, Thayne Jasperson, Evan Kasprzak, Jess Le Protto, Stuart Marland, Andy Richardson, Jack Scott, Ryan Steele, Brendon Stimson, Nick Sullivan, Ephraim Sykes, Laurie Veldheer, Alex Wong and Stuart Zagnit.
The stage version introduces several brand-new songs by the original team of Menken and Feldman while keeping many of the beloved songs from the film, including ‘Carrying the Banner, ‘Seize the Day,’ ‘King of New York’ and ‘Santa Fe.’
The film Newsies has grown into a cult phenomenon with a generation having grown up on the movie’s driving, infectious score since its 1992 theatrical release and subsequent DVD. Its popularity had grown so dramatically, in fact, that the film’s 2002 DVD release was solely in response to demand from its ardent fans. The film featured a screenplay by Bob Tzudiker & Noni White (Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians).
And here’s some excerpts from our meeting and interview with Steve Fickinger.
Steve started out by explaining his responsibilities, and how Newsies started it’s journey to Broadway.
SF : Well, I am thrilled to talk to you all about Newsies for a couple reasons. First of all, I love the show, and second of all, I’ve been working on it for seven years. So, um, it is my pleas- re- real quickly, I would tell you, this is my job in a nutshell, is if somebody says, Newsies, let’s make it a stage musical, my job is to get the writer, the lyricist, the composer, spend that period for “X” amount of time, which can be “XYZ” amount of time, uh, with doing readings, drafts, notes, workshops, and then we do the first production to actually get the director, choreographer, set designer, etcetera.
So I would say my job starts with the idea, and my job is done when the curtain comes down on opening night, and everyone loves the show. Um, I bet, because you’re all young, maybe some of you were kids when Newsies came out. Maybe you saw it when you were kids. I can’t imagine many of you saw it in the theaters, because I think it played for one week.
SF : Well, as you might know, oddly in the film failed. Failed, failed. I think it made maybe three million bucks. It was in the theater for one weeks, one week, a famous failure. But it developed this cult following on home video, and there is a generation of kids who, uh, again, you know, let’s meet me in age, were now maybe twenty-five, twenty-eight, thirty, this movie is like a religion for them. They know everything about it, they know every word, they know every lyric, they know the moves, wonderful.
So that’s terrific, that’s a little, kind of a cult group that’s out there, excuse me, and when I came, I’ve been at Disney for more years than I care to admit, about as long as it’s been since Newsies came out, which is, I’ve been here eighteen years. And when I came to this particular job that I currently occupy, um, and was told, you know, maybe Newsies and musical on stage, uh, it is, we keep track of such things. When people ask to do shows at their school, at their local dinner theater, at their performing arts center, uh, there are, two shows are neck in neck with the most requested titles.
And when I say it, I don’t mean things like Beauty and the Beast or Lion King. They’re there. You know, you can go do them if you’d like. These are shows that we have not yet developed for a stage adaptation. One is Newsies, number one requested. Th- this one is, the other one’s a little left to center, but I gonna see anyone else can guess what this second one, neck in neck, year in, year out, number one.
BLOGGER QUESTION : Alice in Wonderland? (MY QUESTION. ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES. EVER. FOR ALL TIME.)
SF : No, but you’re on to, but you’re on to something. Uh, when you think about the recent film of, of Alice in Wonderland, that’s exactly correct, the Nightmare Before Christmas. Those are the two….
Next Steve explained that after doing some workshops, they decided to do a regional production. Guess where they did that regional production> Right here in my home, new Jersey.
So we decided to do this regional production at the Paper Mill Playhouse out in Millburn, New Jersey. Something a little left to center for us because it’s so close to New York. We’d shied away from it before because people are going to go, even though it’s a regional theater, and it’s half, or where people are going to go, and you kind of can’t really do your work, um, under the cloak of secrecy. But because Newsies is such, is such an unknown property, it was, there was kind of feeling of, well people like it or don’t like even that it, we still really kind do it off the radar.
The show just really caught fire in New Jersey, and, uh, the National Press came. We didn’t, again really invite them, but they came anyway.
So when we received just, um, sort of an avalanche of great press on Newsies from, you know, the New York Times, give us a break, Mirror Times, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, New York Magazine, etcetera, their review were just terrific. You know, we weren’t necessarily, um, nothing’s ever perfection. You still see there’s more work to be done, but, um, but we had our run, which was a finite amount of time, and it was terrific. It was very, very exciting, and, um, there was also just speculation, would we move to Broadway.
Many people would think that it’s a natural question that will answer itself, but it’s not. We have a lot of micromanagement that goes on internally, and we think things through once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, six times, seven times. Sometimes I think we just kind of get off the edge of an envelope and make a decision. But we did make a decision, and that was to take the show to Broadway, which we’re going to do. We begin rehearsals on February 12th, 13th? We open for previews March 15th. We’ve, now we open, officially on March 29th, we have open, announced a limited run, you know, anything could happen.
Next we got a quick peek at a taped scene.
BLOGGER QUESTION: The cast looks very young. What’s the age range?
SF : Well, that’s really, uh, a good question, I’ll tell you why. Because in reality, this is based on an actual incident that happened around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and newsboys, newsies, or were newsgirls, too, and newsies were young, young, young, young, young. They were kids. That’s fine if you’re going to do a wonderful show like Annie, where people made broad declarations and wise crack, and make one line, but if you actually have a story that’s going to have the level of choreography that we wanted, that’s going to really have the demands upon a performer that we wanted the show to have, it’s just not going to really happen if you have a bunch of twelve year olds.
So we wanted to, our goal was to really get people that age would be kind of, if they were to come right out of college. Right out of college, you’re twenty-two, and as you know, if you’re our age, twenty-two looks younger and younger all the time. So, um, I would say that aside from the two boys who were double cast to our kids, who I think one is eleven, and one is maybe, but twelve, I would say the cast ranges from sixteen. probably our oldest newsie is twenty-eight, although he looks very young. I would say to you, the median age is about twenty-three.
I wanted this to look like an expression of young, athletic men and women, who were, uh, expressing their emotion, their spirit, their joy, their frustration, whatever emotion would be through dance.
So I wanted it to feel very, very athletic, so there’s a lot of gymnastics in it, and there is a lot of, um, uh- uh, just, uh, the level of ability in it is really extraordinary, and I think those of us who are older than that really marvel that we were able to find that many, we’ll call them kids, who were able to perform at that level. So that’s about what I’d say, I’d say about twenty-two, twenty-three.
BLOGGER QUESTION : When Newsies begins, will you be spending the next seven years doing that sort of work again?
SF : I’ll give you the inside story on that. Oh no, I, I never have just one show that’s in development. I was in many shows in development. Uh, it just that is happens to be that the two that I’d been working on for the longest amount of time were Aladdin and Newsies, so the fact their premier productions, literally back to back, was just extraordinary to. Night before Christmas has been, um, has been, uh, uh, a little stop and go because, uh, when we first did it, we really wanted to do it with the blessing of Tim Burton, and we wanted him to, it had to be something that he was happy about and it is, and it was, and he grew so enchanted by the idea, that he wants to be part of.
And that’s not an easy schedule to get on. So, uh, as God is my witness, as long as I draw breath, it will get there.
And then news that made my day.
SF : Yes. Uh, we are working on Alice in Wonderland right now, and that will be with Tim Burton, as well. There is a, there is, although, you know, a- a school adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland, Jr., so, um, there will be an Alice in Wonderland, and there will be a Nightmare before Christmas.
And a brief explanation on what types of films might do well on Broadway.
SF : When you do a stage adaptation, if a film is, opens and is immediately very, very successful, it doesn’t always mean that it’s going be beloved for decades. A stage show has to be, or I believe, often based on something that is, was, or you feel will be be beloved for decades.
Because twenty years, they’re still interested in it. So I’m not saying it has to be a block buster for you to do a stage adaptation. You either have to see something in it that you feel will last for the decades, or something that has already lasted through the decades.
Advance tickets went on sale on Monday, January 30th. Newsies Opening night on Broadway is March 29th, and the show is currently scheduled to run until June 10th.
MORE INFO
Disney Newsies website
Disney Newsies on Facebook
All expenses were covered by Disney & DreamWorks. Please note that as always my opinions are my own, and that the opinions reflected in this post have not been influenced by the sponsor in any way.
Interestinig–not typical Disney animation or live scripting.