Germantown Academy’s most recent Belfry production was the hit Disney musical, Newsies. This year, the cast consisted of both Upper and Middle School students, which nearly doubled the cast size. After two years of abnormal shows at GA, many were excited to be back on stage or experience their first time on stage in front of a live audience. Newsies is a story about a group of New York newsboys that go on strike because of rising newspaper, or “papes”, prices. The GA cast included Will Cooper ’22 as Jack Kelly, Madison Quinter ’24 as Katherine Plumber, Julian Adams ’25 as Crutchie, Jenna Nolan ’22 as Davey, Elisia Burgess ’28 as Les, Gianna Mooney ’25 as Race, and over sixty more cast members.
Creating a show under COVID restrictions that includes students from seven different grade levels brought about many challenges. Preparation for the show took five months, starting in November of 2021where many people involved in the show found the masking and distancing requirements to be difficult to work with. Assistant director Emma Hearn ’14 says it was especially difficult in January with multiple absences because, “We had to try to balance the rehearsals to see what we could do with the people that were there”.
Ms. Hearn also notes how masks were hard to work with especially in theater because, “It’s really hard to perform in masks. Not only just dancing and heavy breathing, like in sports, but the performance aspect; you use your full body, your whole face to communicate a story to an audience, or to try to project your lines and vocals is really difficult with masks.” Jenna Nolan ’22, who played Davey, said, “We all had to be fully masked and distanced at first; and having almost 70 people in a cast across seven grades was really a challenge, especially while you’re doing all of the dancing on top of it.” When the mask mandate was lifted just a few days before opening night, Ms. Hearn was overwhelmed, saying, “It was emotional looking at it…just to see their faces and express their emotion was really exciting.”
While the production faced many challenges with COVID restrictions, many enjoyed preparing for the show. Gianna Mooney ’25, who played Race, said she loved “meeting new friends I don’t see often at school” and that “the learning process is exciting.” Grace Pulli ’25 was in charge of altering and fitting the cast for their costumes. She enjoyed coming to rehearsal everyday because one of her “favorite things about doing the show was getting to know everyone. It’s so weird knowing that we all shared this experience and now we have to go back to not seeing each other everyday.”
Candice Medina ’22 designed the set of the show along with Bethany Matje ’22 and Coco DeBartlo ’23. Students were given more independence than they did in previous shows with set designing. The set was almost completely designed, built, and decorated by students. Medina said she liked this new independence, saying it, “gave us a lot of just freedom to do what we wanted to do.” She mentioned how “a bunch of people who were in the audience were complimenting the set and that just made me feel so good about it all.”
Although this year’s show was different from years past in a number of ways, many seniors felt this was a successful last show to end on. Nolan said, “I’ve been in so many that it’s definitely very sad taking the final bow, but I’m glad it ended on a high note.”