“I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
—Benjamin Franklin

Early sketches of the abstracted press

Drawing of the printing press

Routed and painted facing of the press in progress

Scouring farmhouses and junkyards for the right elements that make sense scenically, but also safe for actors to handle.

The “final parts” for the press to work in the climactic scene—gears, clamps, cranks—were integrated into the beams and surfaces that surrounded the audience, further solidifying the mechanistic ties to the city itself. The entire space became the press and a means for the newsies to succeed, the audience themselves very much actors in that journey.

The printing press being fed paper

Groundplan

With the center of the stage the domain of Society, it was fitting to make the audience area that surrounds the 3/4 thrust stage as the world of the newsies. This also was a practical solution of mine—the ensemble cast was actually much smaller than what the script calls for, and there are several moments in the show that need the power of a large politically weak group of underlings fighting the elite few. In order to support the concept of the house serving as the underbelly domain of the newsies, I designed two staging areas that were at the height of, and above, the audience—made of newspapers, elevated train girders, and ramshackle scaffolding to represent the machine of the city in that industrial age of the 1890’s. As the air effects kicked in during specific tumultuous moments of the show (simple fans high in the ceiling), newspapers hanging from beams would flutter and twist.

Newsie platform in the alcoves of the house, high above the audience

Newsie platform in the alcoves of the house

Extending the metaphor that New York City itself operated as one giant machine, I used the element of ink as the connective grease. It formed the skyline on the upstage wall. The skyline is later revealed in the show to be the center of a triptych—on the left I painted the profile of Pulitzer, and with him is a bucket of ink labeled “power.” On the right, the deluge of ink ends in a wave, and trapped in that wave are the newsies—their arms and legs reaching out through jail bars, news-caps and crutches flying.

Early sketch of the backdrop with ink dripping to form the skyline; the curved support for the upstage newspaper wall so that the backdrop seamlessly flowed to the floor.

The triptych of Pulitzer, inked-over skyline, and wave.

The ink from the skyline dripped down, flowing through the Belgian block streets and seeping into the “gutters” and “margins”—unwanted areas for ink in a newspaper as well as descriptors of the lower class. I elevated grated gutters around the stage and while they restricted the movements of upper class characters, the newsies were able to use them to catapult around the space and connect with each other.

Reference images and paint treatment samples

Deck painting in progress