NAHS Theatre Arts is fostering a new wave of student leadership. At the end of the 2024-2025 school year, NAHS Theatre applied for a grant with Disney. This grant would pay for all of the set pieces, provide free rights to the show, and more. Due to the hard work of the students in the NAHS theatre program the grant was approved. This September 11-14, NAHS partnering with Disney, will produce Newsies Jr.
This production has promoted a student-based production team. This team includes student directors, choreographer, costume designer, and set designer. For the past two months they have been working with their peers as well as middle schoolers on the production of this show. Throughout the process, each student leader has been mentored by an adult with experience in their field of theatre. However, the final product of the show will result ultimately from the hard work of this student creative team.
Senior Madelyn Quillo has been in dance classes for ten years. She has previously choreographed four shows split between Hazelwood and Slate Run Elementary, as well as teaching dance classes at Weber School of Dance. Her mentor is Floyd Central Alum, Lexie Stites. Quillo is the student choreographer for Newsies Jr.
“It has been so awesome to have someone that’s also in charge of me,” Quillo said. “So that if I ever need help, I don’t feel lost. In the past I haven’t had a mentor and I’ve just had to figure it out. Those shows haven’t come out the best they can because I haven’t been the best that I can be, but having a mentor there to kind of tell me, ‘hey, this part doesn’t really look good. What if we change it to this?’ And then giving me the freedom to go back and figure out how I want to change it has been really great and has elevated this show.”
Newsies Jr. is set in the late 1800s, two decades before World War I when the price of newspapers went up ten cents the newsies could not afford the cost of living. Therefore they go on strike to lower their wages, but end up realizing their need for rights as child workers.
Talent from all Ages
“This show has been a lot different than other shows,” Quillo said. “It’s been really great to work with both [middle and high schoolers] and be able to branch out with what I’m doing and who I’m working with. There are a lot more dancers in this show than I’ve previously worked with, and so it’s been fun to work with them and utilize everything I want to and not have to work with a very small group of dancers.”
The fact that Hazelwood, Highland Hills and Scribner middle schools get out an hour later than high school was originally an issue in rehearsals. However, Quillo has utilized the high schoolers to serve as mentors for the middle schoolers. She teaches the high school cast right after school, when middle schoolers come they can learn from the high school cast.
“I can pour a lot of information on the high schoolers that might not sit with the middle schoolers,” Quillo said. “ The high schoolers can help explain that and dig deeper into the details of the choreography and just the show in general with the younger kids.”
Through her previous experiences in choreography Quillo developed her own process for choreographing.
“I come up with my ideas by sitting down and listening to the music, literally over and over and over and over again,” Quillo said. “And then, after I really know the music, I just start dancing. I start picking out small things that I liked from what I did, and then I start piecing those together and adding in the bigger steps… then I go and fill the rest with transitions and other things that I can use to fill this space.”
Costuming of a Period Piece
Junior Gwen Earl, student costume designer, has been in theatre for almost a decade. During this process she is being mentored by Carrie Quillo, who has costume designed for NAHS theatre many times previously. Earl was taught to sew 7 years ago, however this is her first project affiliated with NAHS.
“This role checked off all my boxes,” Earl said, “and I always wanted to try some tech aspect… I was able to do art. I was able to look up clothes, get to dress people up like little dolls, and use my sewing.”
Earl heavily relies on research to costume design a period piece such as Newsies Jr. This is the first step in her designing process.
“My favorite thing is to search up in that time period, clothing magazines,” Earl said, “because clothing magazines have been around since medieval times showing off outfits and stuff like that. What is royal, what the queen is wearing, stuff like that. That was really big to see what the queen is wearing, everyone else would wear…and then taking what I see on those costuming, then researching what people could really afford, and then creating something out of that.”
Newsies Jr. is centered around the working boys of New York. So for this project that high fashion of the time period wasn’t used. Instead, Earl took her own creative liberties to make this show stand out.
“I really try to add a more historical feel and add different shapes,” Earl said, “someone is going to be wearing railroad workers’ clothing, because this shows it is not just the newsies. It even talks about it in the story, representing all about the kids in the sweatshops, stuff like that. So I wanted to show kids from other areas. I mean it’s just this is the big turning point on just health in the workplace. We also just did Radium Girls, another big turning point in the health and working environments. I just wanted to show the other aspects of life in this show.”
Earl’s great ambition has aided her in the costume production in this show, but also led her to problems in follow through.
“Not everything I want is gonna be able to happen within the budget,” Earl said. “For example, I really, really, really wanted to put Medda in this tight fitted corset, like this crazy thing. I wanted this dark, gorgeous purple. It’s hard to find something like that. So I had to compromise. And for a bit, I almost had to give up the railroad worker bit because we couldn’t find overalls. I found some, though. I never gave up. It’s just hard to give up an idea you really like, but sometimes you have to do it.”
After all Earl has learned through this experience, she urges others also to try new things.
“It’s great to try stuff,” Earl said. “Try something new. I really do believe, at least have one show that you’re backstage. So you truly understand what they go through, because I didn’t realize how hard costume directors work.”
High School Creative Team
Junior Dashawndre Wright is one of two student directors co-directing Newsies Jr. Wright has been involved in theatre for 10 years. He is also the community outreach officer for NAHS Theatre Arts.
“Newsies Jr. has a mixed ensemble of both middle school and high schoolers,” Wright said. “This ensemble, made up of the smaller characters that you would call ‘background characters’, will be featured in every single performance, every single night. The bigger characters, however, like Jack Kelly, Catherine, Pulitzer are split between one high schooler and one middle schooler each show.”
“I’d say one of the biggest challenges working with the creative team,” Wright said, “that’s me, Ruby [Laffin] and Madelyn [Quillo], is that we all have very creative minds and we have big, grand ideas. So sometimes if we have to conflict manage when we have clashing ideas, but we work really well together in the way that we collaborate and compromise with each other.”
Wright, as well as the other co-director Ruby Laffin, have been mentored throughout this show by NAHS’s theatre teacher and director, Miss Simmons.
“My mentor, Ruby and I, our mentor is our theatre director, Amanda Simmons,” Wright said. “I think the greatest lesson Miss Simmons has taught us through this experience is how to collaborate and how to organize. Those are the two greatest things that I’ve gotten from this, especially in working with Miss Simmons.”
This show has sparked a great need for team work among the creative team. Through their close collaboration, Wright, Quillo, and Laffin have also learned how to function effectively as a team. “The greatest thing about directing,” Wright said, “the thing that makes me passionate, is that I can have a vision, and Ruby can have a vision, and Madelyn can have a vision, and we can all put these things together and give it life on the stage…It’s been really awesome to also work with peers and kind of gain these new perspectives on these things.”
This experience is one of Wright’s first experiences in a formal leadership position, and his very first experience directing a musical.
“I can understand the other side of it now,” Wright said, “instead of just the actor’s perspective. Seeing both sides, both the director and actor, I think in the long run will make me a better actor. And I think Ruby and Madelyn can probably say the same. It’s been a great experience because of the new perspectives that we’ve gained.”
Newsies Jr. tickets are available on the NAHS theatre website; the show debuts September 11 and runs through September 14.
