Paper Mill Playhouse has just announced the full creative team behind its season opener, the premiere of a new Disney stage musical, Newsies. Featuring music by eight-time Academy Award®-winning composer Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Sister Act, The Little Mermaid), lyrics by Jack Feldman and a new book by four-time Tony® Award winner Harvey Fierstein (La Cage aux Folles, Torch Song Trilogy), Newsies is adapted for the stage from the 1992 live-action Disney feature film musical. The show begins performances on Thursday, September 15. The official press opening is scheduled for Sunday, September 25.
The production will be directed at Paper Mill by Tony® nominee Jeff Calhoun. Calhoun made his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1982). He also starred opposite Twiggy in My One and Only (1983). Calhoun's collaboration with Tommy Tune resulted in the 1991 Tony Award for Best Choreography for The Will Rogers Follies. His Broadway directing debut was Tommy Tune Tonight! (1992). Calhoun began his association with Deaf West Theatre in 2000 when he directed and choreographed a world premiere adaptation of Oliver! Calhoun continued his work with Deaf West Theater with Big River the following season. Big River subsequently played Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre in 2003 on Broadway and garnered the 2004 Tony Award honor for Excellence in Theater.
Calhoun directed both the world premiere and international productions of Disney's High School Musical: On Stage and Disney's High School Musical 2: On Stage. Calhoun's additional Broadway credits include: the first Broadway revival of Grease (1994), Annie Get Your Gun (1999), Bells Are Ringing (2001), Brooklyn The Musical (2004), and Grey Gardens (2006). Calhoun is an Associate Artist at Ford's Theater, Washington, DC, where he directed both the 2008 Presidential Gala presentation of Frank Wildhorn's The Civil War and a new production of that same work as part of the Ford's Theater 2009 reopening season. Calhoun recently collaborated with composer Frank Wildhorn, lyricist Don Black and librettist Ivan Menchell on a new musical entitled Bonnie & Clyde which had its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in November 2009 and will open on Broadway December 1, 2011.
Newsies will be choreographed by Tony® nominee Christopher Gattelli. Christopher Gattelli is a choreographer, performer, and director. He has been nominated for the Tony® Award for Best Choreography for South Pacific, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography for Altar Boyz. Other Broadway credits include: Sunday in the Park with George; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; The Ritz; Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me; 13; High Fidelity. He won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for Altar Boyz and Bat Boy: The Musical. He is currently represented off-Broadway with Silence! The Musical as director/choreographer. Gattelli also directed the world premiere of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, the first Jim Henson musical at Goodspeed Opera House. At Paper Mill Playhouse Gattelli choreographed the critically acclaimed production of A Baker's Wife in 2005.
Michael Kosarin (Music Supervisor/Vocal and Incidental Music Arranger) has worked steadily on Broadway since 1982, starting with the original production of Nine - The Musical. He then music directed, arranged, and/or conducted Grand Hotel, Mayor, The Secret Garden, King David, Triumph of Love, Beauty and the Beast, Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, and, currently, Sister Act. International productions include Hunchback of Notre Dame (Berlin) and A Chorus Line (first international tour). He has been composer Alan Menken's music director for nearly twenty years, and films they did together include Tangled, the recent Captain America, as well as Enchanted, Hercules, Home on the Range, Shaggy Dog, and Pocahontas. Kosarin won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for his work on A Christmas Carol, and was nominated for another Emmy for The Music Man. His recording and concert work is also extensive, having concertized, arranged for, and recorded with the Boston Pops, Carly Simon, Barbara Cook, Jane Krakowski, Kristin Chenoweth, Eddie Fisher, and many others.
David Holcenberg will serve as Music Director on Newsies. Holcenberg's Broadway credits include:
Mamma Mia!, Show Boat, Titanic, Seussical (as music director) and Good Vibrations (musical arrangements). Other shows include the Aherns and Flaherty shows Dessa Rose and The Glorious Ones at Lincoln Center and the US premiere of Ragtime (LA Drama Critics Award: Distinguished Achievement in Musical Direction) as well as the Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera. Holcenberg's show Bingo, written with Ilene Reid and Michael Heitzman, just finished a successful run off Broadway and is currently playing around the country. On the concert stage, Holcenberg is conductor for Irish tenor Ciaran Sheehan (Carnegie Hall, PBS and recordings). He has served as guest conductor for the Cleveland Pops, conducted for PBS Great Performances: Tribute to Hammerstein and toured the country with Theodore Bikel. Holcenberg is currently the associate music supervisor for Mamma Mia! (North America and Moscow).
Scenic Designer Tobin Ost will design the set for Newsies. Ost created the costumes and served as associate set designer on the Broadway musical Brooklyn. Also on Broadway Ost served as costume designer on The Philanthropist. Other New York credits include: The Overwhelming (Roundabout Theatre - costume/associate set design); Nightingale (Manhattan Theatre Club - set design); Grace (MCC - set design); Zanna, Don't! (co-set/costume design); Almost Heaven (costume design) and Fighting Words (set design). Most recently Ost served as set and costume designer for the new musical, Bonnie and Clyde at LaJolla Playhouse.
Jess Goldstein will provide original costume designs for Newsies. Goldstein won the 2005 Tony® Award for Best Costume Design of a Play for The Rivals. Broadway credits include: Cymbeline, Henry IV (with Kevin Kline), The Rivals (all at Lincoln Center Theater), Jersey Boys (also in London), The Homecoming, The Apple Tree (with Kristin Chenoweth), Julius Caesar (with Denzel Washington), Take Me Out, Proof, Sight Unseen, Brooklyn Boy, Judgment at Nuremberg, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Tintypes, The Most Happy Fella, Inherit the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Rainmaker. Goldstein's work was last seen on the Paper Mill Playhouse stage for Little House on the Prairie: The Musical.
Jeff Croiter joins the Newsies creative team as Lighting Designer. Croiter's Broadway credits include: The Pee Wee Herman Show; Next Fall; Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway; and concerts at the New Amsterdam including Chess, Hair and On the Twentieth Century. Other NYC credits include A Lie of the Mind; Ordinary Days; Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Streamers; Family Guy Sings!; Jerry Springer: The Opera; Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall; Love Child; Adrift in Macao; The Voysey Inheritance; The Internationalist; Burleigh Grime$; Drumstruck; Jacques Brel; I Love You Because; Almost, Maine; Trumbo; Matt & Ben; Cam Jansen; Miss Witherspoon; Privilege; The Dazzle; Fiction; and Jennifer Muller/The Works. Croiter's work as a lighting designer was recently featured in Paper Mill Playhouse's 1776.
Sven Ortel is the Projection Designer for Newsies. Ortel designs artwork and projections for theatre, musicals, opera, dance and beyond. On Broadway, Ortel designed projections for Wonderland, Woman on the Verge, The Little Mermaid, Deuce, Jumpers, Faith Healer and The Woman in White (projection realization). Off-Broadway: Hamlet (TFANA). Other critically acclaimed designs include: A Disappearing Number (with Complicite at LCF 2010, West End, three world tours), Rebecca (Vienna), Marguerite (West End, Tokyo), The Sea (West End), Measure for Measure (with Complicite at NT,London, world tour), The Ring Cycle (Mariinsky, Covent Garden), Tiefland (Zurich, Barcelona) and Swan Lake (San Francisco Ballet).
Rounding out the creative team are: Randy Hansen (Sound Design), Chuck LaPointe (Hair and Wig Design), J. Allen Suddeth (Fight Director) and Shane Ann Younts (Dialect Coach). Thomas J. Gates will serve as Production Stage Manager.
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, released in 2002 in response to demand from fans. Its popularity has grown so dramatically, in fact, that - of all the Disney film musicals not yet adapted to the stage - Newsies has for years been the single most requested title by professional and amateur theater groups, according to the world's largest dramatic licensing agent MTI. This new stage version keeps many of the film's beloved songs and adds several new numbers by the original team of Menken and Feldman.
Newsies is inspired by the real life 'Newsboy Strike of 1899,' when newsboy Kid Blink led the ragged orphans and runaways known as newsies on a two-week-long action against Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and other powerful newspaper publishers. Set in New York City at the turn of the century, the musical is the tale of newsie Jack Kelly, who dreams of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when Pulitzer and Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsies' expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies his army of newsies to strike.
Newsies begins at Paper Mill Playhouse on Thursday, September 15, and will be performed eight times a week, Wednesday through Sunday, through Sunday, October 16. Three, four and five show subscription packages are available now, starting at $84. Single tickets are now on sale and range in price from $25-$96. Tickets may be purchased by calling 973-376-4343 , or at the Paper Mill Playhouse Box Office at 22 Brookside Drive in Millburn, or online at www.papermill.org. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express accepted. Groups of ten or more can receive up to a 35% discount on tickets and should call 973-315-1680 . Newsies is generously supported by a grant from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation. Investors Savings Bank is the proud sponsor of Paper Mill Playhouse's 2011-2012 season.
