Sam Fultz recalls a time in middle school when close friend and castmate Finley Gay was obsessed with “Newsies.”
“He was crazy about the show for about three months and it was the most annoying thing because every day I would go to lunch and all I would hear was just Finley singing ‘Carrying the banner da da da’ and I was like when is it going to end,” he said.
The end is here and it’s come full circle as Fultz, as Jack Kelly, prepares to carry the banner against his onstage nemesis, Joseph Pulitzer, played by Gay, when the Logansport Junior Civic Theater performs “Newsies” at the McHale Performing Arts Center this weekend. It will be the last JCT show for Fultz and Gay who both head to college in August.
“Now that we are doing (“Newsies”) I’m thinking ‘maybe I shouldn’t have been so harsh,” said Fultz. “Because it’s a very fun show.”
“Newsies” is a musical based on the 1992 film (which was also a musical) and tells a fictionalized account of the 1899 Newsboy Strike in which young boys who sold newspapers for the “New York World,” run by Joseph Pulitzer, and “New York Journal,” run by William Randolph Hearst, went on strike to battle unfair compensation. The stage production debuted in 2011.
Director Dan McDonald, a teacher at Pioneer, said that the play is set at a time when a lot of social change was happening such as reformations to prisons and child labor, women wanted the right to vote and unions were facing violent backlash as they sought better working conditions.
For many of the young actors, it’s a time of change as well as they prepare to leave Logansport for college. The themes of found family, hopes and dreams and challenging the status quo surely resonate amongst many in the large cast, especially as the unknown looms ahead.
Leading the newsboy strike onstage is Fultz’s Jack Kelly. Layla Powell plays Katherine, a young reporter trying to find her big break. Joining Fultz and Powell are Cooper Prifogle, Austin Brooke, Ellison Kitchell and Ella Brandstatter, each playing a newsies member. They are supported by a massive ensemble cast that is its own unified character.
“I have never seen a group of kids have more fun putting a show together,” said McDonald. “And that’s not to say the previous shows that the kids didn’t have fun. But not like this group. Holy cow, they’ve had a ball putting this show together. And they have been really strong all the way through.”
The leads
Fultz has had a big year as he prepares to join the Jacobs School of Music at IU in the fall. A Logansport High School graduate, Fultz starred as SpongeBob in the school’s Winter Fantasy production of “The SpongeBob Musical” and got to show his comedic side in various roles during “The 39 Steps.”
Fultz described Jack Kelly as someone who is more about action than stopping to think, but acts as a big brother figure to the newsies who look to him for guidance.
Fultz has the charisma to bring Jack Kelly to life but he also give the character a big heart.
“He’s very much a poster child for the movement they are trying to do but he’s also still a softie,” Fultz said.
In Powell’s Katherine, Kelly finds a love interest but she soon turns out to be a valuable asset to the newsies as she wants to cover the strike in the newspaper, which gives Powell an opportunity to showcase her voice during “Watch What Happens,” a song that is thankfully not quite a love song but instead pulls on the threads of female empowerment that is spreading at the point in time and focuses instead of the challenge of writing a news story and persevering doing a struggle. Powell will attend Ball State in the fall.
Those familiar with Pioneer Junior/ Senior High School theater already knew Ellison Kitchell, an incoming sophom*ore, was a star, and this year she gets to show more of her abilities as the charismatic and sarcastic Race Track, a cigar-toting newsies who Kitchell says lifts up the newsies spirits with sarcastic asides and speaking her mind to power.
Cooper Prifogle, a Logansport High School sophom*ore, gets his biggest role to date as Crutchie, a sympathetic newsie with a bad leg. Prifogle saw himself in the character and is perfect for role. Both Crutchie and Prifogle are gentle people you want to cheer for, characteristics that make Prifogle perfect for his dream role as Seymour in “Little Shop of Horrors” (please make it happen JCT or Mr. Kinney.)
“(Crutchie) is the one lifting all the other characters up,” said Prifogle. “He’s overall the enthusiastic person.”
Prifogle said the show offers many of the newsies actors an opportunity to really put their own personalities into their characters which has helped create such an enjoyable experience during summer rehearsals.
Ella Brandstatter, the youngest of the von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music” last summer, now plays a key role in newsies as Les, the young sibling to Austin Brooke’s Davey. Soon to be a fifth grader at Logansport Intermediate School, Brandstatter holds her own with the JCT veterans, acting with poise after only three years of experience.
Brandstatter described her character as fearless but said she didn’t really identify with that quality. It’s hard to tell that watching her perform onstage.
In the role of Davey, Brooke shows just how deep his acting repertoire is. Coming off a show-stealing performance as the Cowardly Lion in Pioneer’s production of “The Wizard of Oz,” Brooke’s character is more understated. He’s a quiet and no-nonsense young man who is out to help his family during tough times. While the role may not be as exciting as the Lion or Lumiere in “Beauty and the Beast,” Brooke shows why he deserves to study theater in New York City for two weeks immediately after “Newsies” comes to an end.
Brooke called “Newsies” one of his favorite musicals.
“It’s very rare to see an almost all male cast in theater, especially musicals,” he said. “I understand we don’t have a lot of guys (in JCT) but it’s always cool to see male representation in theater because you don’t see that a lot in small community theaters.”
Brooke said that one of the great things about “Newsies” is that it gives everyone a special part.
“Everyone gets to do something cool,” he said. “In this musical the ensemble is one of the most important parts and they are always onstage. Also, this is a musical about brotherhood and for us it’s brotherhood and sisterhood. We’ve become brothers and sisters through this musical.”
Seniors and ensemble
While Fultz and Powell have significant roles, many of the core group of seniors who have helped lead JCT and Logansport High School drama over the last four years have smaller parts. But each gets their moment to shine.
“I have had them in JCT since they were little kids and they are an amazingly talented group of kids,” said McDonald. “And that’s true about the underclassman, too. But the seniors are amazingly talented. They are dedicated and have worked very, very hard to put this show together. They’ve done a marvelous job.”
Kelsey Thomas, who will take her powerful voice to Indianapolis in the fall and study music at Butler, once again delivers a showstopping performance with the song “That’s Rich” just as she did last year in “The Sound of Music” when she sang “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”
Gretchen Prifogle, heading to Purdue, has maybe her biggest performance in her final show. While an ensemble member, she’s constantly in the foreground during the dance numbers and delivers her lines with zest.
Elijah Bault has gravitated between performance and the tech side of theater and in the fall, he will go full tech at Ball State. He anticipated “Newsies” will be his last performance and he clearly relishes the moments he’s on stage bantering and dancing with his friends.
Finley Gay, attending Ball State, called Pulitzer a figurehead for the newsies to unite against. Gay plays the character as slightly aloof, someone who is so blinded by money he can’t see how his decisions affect others. But he’s willing to change course and correct his ways if it’s beneficial.
“This show has been such a great last one for me because everybody is just so fun to work with,” he said. “I love working with JCT because its so many different people coming together and they are all so awesome and so cool. And also, the crazy amount of talent and hard work in this case, especially the core newsies ensemble who make up a lot of the story.
And it’s truly an ensemble show. During the group’s first full number together—“Carrying The Banner”—there is so much movement on stage it’s hard to pick a focal point. You can focus on the leads but wait—there’s Andy Rojas-Rodriguez, Abby Lupke and Ivy Padilla absolutely killing it on the dancefloor directly downstage left.
When they sing “The World Will Know,” there is a conviction in their voice. These are extremely smart kids who are very aware of the world they are growing up in. So when they shout “So the world says no?/ Well the kids do, too/ Try to walk all over us/ We’ll stomp all over you” and slam their newspaper bags on the stage, it’s hard not to imagine there’s a bit of catharsis in the gesture.
Fultz said he thought “Newsies” encompasses the spirit of young people, what they want and who they want to be.
“There are a lot of young kids and they are voicing their opinions because they want better for themselves because they are the ones who are going to grow up in it,” he said. “It’s our world; we are inheriting it from you. We don’t want it to be a mess.”
With sometimes up to 30 or more dancers on stage, it could be easy for chaos to break out, but co-director and choreographer Emily Pancake knew the talent she had before her and went all-in on the dance numbers. It’s hard to tell who had the most fun—Pancake in designing the performances or the kids bringing them to life. There’s a bit of flair in those group numbers reminiscent of “My Shot” from “Hamilton.”
“It’s such a fun show,” said Kitchell. “I think the audience will have fun. They will sense that we are having fun. It’s very entertaining. It’s just a well-written show.”
For many, “Newsies” presents a first and last opportunity to see these skilled young actors before the seniors head off to find future success in their chosen career paths. “Newsies” is a brilliant goodbye to those seniors as well as a showcase for the talent that remains in Cass County.
“Everyone has worked really hard on it,” Brandstatter said. “They’ve made this play amazing.”
'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); } else { var subMessage = document.createElement('div'); subMessage.id = 'sub-message-top'; subMessage.class = 'panel panel-default'; subMessage.style.backgroundColor = '#eee'; subMessage.style.borderRadius = '5px'; subMessage.style.padding = '10px'; subMessage.style.marginTop = '25px'; subMessage.style.marginBottom = '25px'; subMessage.innerHTML = '
Support local journalism.
Subscribe Today'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); }}
