Fountain City Festival Features “Newsies”

By: Jenna Frisby
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
jenna@thevillagereporter.com

For 25 years the Fountain City Festival has been bringing entertainment to the community of Bryan. Beginning in 1999, the first ever musical production done was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Since then, they have held 23 shows over the years all leading to this year’s production, Newsies.

The Disney’s broadway musical Newsies, done this year by the Fountain City Festival Musical Theater in collaboration with Art of Movement Dance Studio, featured over 50 cast members, a pit orchestra of 13 instruments, and a production team of 30 members, three of whom were a part of the very first FCF production team for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Newsies was performed for four show dates of July 18, 19, 20 & 21 at the Arts & Ed. Center building in Bryan. The 2 1/2-hour production featured two acts each with nine scenes performed, with an intermission between the acts. The production included 16 musical numbers throughout the eighteen scenes, each performed with heart from each cast member involved.

Newsies is a theatrical production with a story line of newsies, or orphaned newspaper boys, from lower Manhattan in 1899. The newsies are forced to go on strike after newspaper publishers Pulitzer raises the price of the newspapers.

Through runaway scenes, trying to ban together other newsies from neighboring communities to join them in their strike, and a love story all in the midst, Newsies is about dreaming big, fighting against social injustice, and giving a voice to those in need.

The Fountain City Festival recognized the considerable amount of people who had a hand in making the production possible including seven benefactors, thirteen sponsors, two boosters, multiple advertisers and a special thanks to Bryan City Schools, Bryan Area Foundation, Keith Day, Spangler Candy Company, Williams County Public Library, Mrs. Mirna Romes, and the Williams County Community Theater.