High schoolers in Grand Forks are gearing up for this spring’s musical production of Newsies, the David and Goliath story of young newspaper hawkers who took on a greedy print industry in late 19th-century New York City.
Scott DeWynter-Wilkie, drama teacher at Grand Forks Secondary School (GFSS), said he was floored when over 50 kids in Grades 8-12 auditioned for the play earlier this month.
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“I was expecting to see maybe a handful come out, so I was overjoyed by the turnout,” DeWynter-Wilkie told The Gazette Wednesday, March 16.
He and the Boundary Musical and Theatre Society’s (BMTS) Aaron Baker are co-directing the show, to run at the GFSS auditorium June 9-12. It will be DeWynter-Wilkie’s first time producing a musical — one that will showcase many on-stage firsts by students who took on their roles as extra-curricular pursuits.
The enthusiasm speaks partly to a growing theatre culture at GFSS, and partly to kids’ pent up energies.
“There’s been too many ‘No, we cant’s’ after two years of COVID, so I’m hoping we’ll be one of the first ‘Yes, we cans,’” DeWynter-Wilkie said.
The show is meanwhile drawing in GFSS’s metal shop and sewing department, whose students will forge metal works for the musical’s set and fashion actors’ costumes.
He and Baker hope the kids will be able to perform in front of a live audience, but the show’s format will depend on pandemic restrictions come mid-June.
The pandemic tanked BMTS’s hoped-for production of Steel Magnolias in July 2021, but the theatre company sidestepped COVID-19 last month by live-streaming their production of Disney’s Frozen.
Newsies will feature the entire senior drama class at GFSS, according to DeWynter-Wilkie.
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