One year after their last musical was cancelled due to COVID-19, the Marquette Catholic High School Theatre Department once more took the stage. This year, they performed their rendition of Disney’s “Newsies,” a musical inspired by the New York City Newsboys Strike of 1899.
The musical became a personal favorite to a number of the current cast members years ago after they saw it performed at a theatre in Crown Point. With a wide variety of musical numbers, dance performances, and room for a huge cast, Crane kept the idea of performing “Newsies” in her pocket and waited for the perfect year to put it into production.
“They’ve been absolutely enthralled with it since then,” she said. “This year, they’re all coming up and there’s a bunch of them together in the show, so we thought it was time.”
Senior Molly Neary is one member of that group, and had actually inspired the trip to go see an in-person performance. Crane went as far as to say that their production of “Newsies” would never have happened without Neary. For her to take the stage with “Newsies” as her final high school performance was a special moment for the senior.
“I started watching ‘Newsies’ about five years ago, and haven’t stopped since,” she said. “I actually watch it almost every two weeks. When our director announced that we were doing ‘Newsies,’ I was like, ‘No way, you’re lying.’ This means everything to me, this is my favorite musical of all-time. It was an amazing feeling to be a part of that show.”
Due to COVID-19, the production is a little different this year. Instead of multiple live showings, Marquette decided to do record one live performance in front of a small audience of family members. That recording will be available for pay-per-view streaming from April 16-18 and 23-25, but for the cast and crew, it was an amazing feeling to hear applause once again.
“I was expecting to not have a senior show,” Neary said. “Being able to perform meant the world and more to me, and having an audience on top of that was just icing on top of the cake. It makes everything so much more worth it to hear their cheers back and forth with us.”
Crane knew how much it hurt last year’s graduating class to miss out on their senior show due to the pandemic – so she invited all of them to come back and take part in “Newsies.” One of those alumni, Aaron White, was able to make it work with their schedule. He lives with a speech impediment that causes a severe stutter, and the work he puts into acting through it is a major creative outlet.
“This means everything,” White said. “To go up on stage and act is a dream come true. I’m happy, but it’s also sad to say goodbye.”
To stay up to date with the latest info the when Newsies will be available to stream, follow MQTT Performing Arts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MQTT-Performing-Arts-101743438028282/.