When young performers took the stage for “Newsies Jr.” this summer, they carried a piece of their own community with them: The Messenger-Press.
Copies of the local newspaper were featured in the production, an especially fitting choice for a musical in which newspapers, the people who sell them and the power of the press are central to the story.
The play was hosted by the Cornerstone Community Arts Project in collaboration with The Songbird’s Gift. Both nonprofit organizations aim to engage young people in music and the performing arts and help them pursue their artistic passions.
CCAP hosts summer music and theater arts camps for rising second-graders through rising fifth-graders in its Rising Stars program and rising fifth-graders through rising ninth-graders in its Broadway Bound program.
The Broadway Bound group, consisting of 27 kids, spent three weeks preparing for “Newsies Jr.”
“It takes a lot of trust and teamwork,” Kara Unger, the lead of the play, said. “We have a very kind staff.”
That teamwork reflects one of the central messages of “Newsies Jr.” itself.
The musical is a youth adaptation of Disney’s “Newsies” and is inspired by the real-life newsboys’ strike of 1899 in New York City. It follows Jack Kelly and a group of young newspaper sellers who make their living selling papers on the streets.
When powerful newspaper publishers increase what the newsies must pay for the papers they sell, the young workers organize and strike for better treatment.
The conflict is rooted in an actual labor dispute. In 1899, young newspaper sellers organized against Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal after the publishers continued charging the newsboys an increased wholesale price for their papers.
Many of the newsies came from poor and working-class families, and some were homeless, but describing the story simply as one about homeless newsboys misses much of its larger message. At its heart, “Newsies” is about young workers discovering that they have more power together than they do individually.
Their fight introduces young performers and audiences to themes of workers’ rights, fairness, solidarity and the importance of standing up for yourself and others.
It is also a story about the power of newspapers.
The newsies depend on newspapers to make a living, but the publishers who control those newspapers also wield enormous economic and social influence. At the same time, journalism becomes a way for the newsies’ story to reach a larger audience and draw attention to their cause.
That makes the use of The Messenger-Press in the local production especially appropriate.
Rather than carrying a fictional newspaper, the young performers were able to use a newspaper that serves their own community.
The Messenger-Press is delivered to approximately 8,000 households in Allentown, Millstone and Upper Freehold, reporting the news and telling the stories of the communities in which many of the performers and their families live.
The paper’s Associate Publisher, Thomas Fritts, also visited the performers on the day of the production to talk about the newspaper and its role in the community.
He then answered questions from the young performers about journalism and community newspapers.
More than a century separates the world depicted in “Newsies Jr.” from today’s community newspapers, but the production offered a reminder of something that has not changed: Newspapers connect people to what is happening around them and give communities a way to tell their stories.
For the young cast, the production combined that message with weeks of rehearsals, music, acting and collaboration before the performers finally took the stage.
And in a musical about young people finding their voices and newspapers helping those voices reach a wider audience, having The Messenger-Press become part of the show brought that message particularly close to home.
