Disney's Tony Award-winning musical, "Newsies," on tour

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ByLeyla Gulen KGO logo
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Tony Award-winning musical, "Newsies," on tour
Disney's Tony Award-winning musical, "Newsies," is on tour and will be putting on quite the show at San Francisco's SHN Orpheum Theatre for the next three weeks.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Disney's Tony Award-winning musical, "Newsies," is on tour and will be putting on quite the show at San Francisco's SHN Orpheum Theatre for the next couple of weeks.

"Newsies" has been a favorite on Broadway since it opened in 2012.

For the first time, audiences across the country can enjoy the heart-stopping show as it travels on a whirlwind 25-city, year-long tour.

An action-packed show of this magnitude takes months to germinate in the rehearsal studios. But, once the music and the steps are down, it doesn't end there.

Continuing to perfect their moves before an evening performance, the cast of "Newsies" laid it all out for our ABC7 News cameras at the Lines Ballet Studios in San Francisco.

James Dodgson is the show's music director and has been working in theater for nearly 20 years. "As the fans, or fansies, as they call them, when they come to see the show, they love it. I turn around when I'm conducting the show and you see such a sense of enjoyment and fun on people's faces," he said.

The show's story is based on New York's pivotal Newsboys Strike of 1899.Similar to those steadfast newsboys, to be a part of the Newsies" cast takes persistence.

"I auditioned for it for three years before I got it. I know I was supposed to do it. I didn't know if it would be Broadway or the tour, but I needed to do it. I refused to let them tell me no," Evan Autio said.

For a pro like Julian Deguzman who grew up in Alameda, performing in the Bay Area is like coming full circle. "I was at the San Francisco ballet, I was here. I took classes here in this very studio with Alonzo King. It's so crazy, it's so nuts that I'm here right now, that I'm not dancing and learning, but I'm doing a TV interview with you right now. It's surreal. All the years I spent in this studio looking at the fog through the window made it all worth it," she said.

You can catch Disney's "Newsies" through March 15. To buy tickets, click here.