Palace Players prepare ‘Newsies’ performance
In its fourth full season and the brainchild of Xandria Cross and Remington Stavros, The Palace Players performers “have a mixture of high school kids — around 26 of the 36 total Players — and young adults and some full-on adults as well” from Farragut and around the immediate area, said Stavros, artistic director for The Palace Players.
Doing about three shows per season, their next is the musical “Newsies,” to be performed in Knoxville Catholic High School’s St. Gregory the Great Auditorium starting at 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday, Aug. 7-8; at 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 9, and at 2 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 10.
Tickets are $25 each per night, or four tickets bought together for $80 (go to palaceplayers.com)
“So the story is based on the newsboys’ strike from the 1890s and the story of the newsies and how it got started and all that,” Stavros said. “(Matthew Sensing) is playing the leader of the newsies, Jack Kelly.
“We also have one of the teachers from Concord Christian School performing in it, Abigail Sensing; she is one of their high school drama teachers,” he added. “Her husband is Matthew Sensing.
“Abigail is playing Katherine Plummer, who is a female reporter who is covering the story. She’s trying to get her big break in the reporting world because, obviously in the 1890s, women were more told to do the entertainment side of things, and so she wanted to do a real story.”
As a result, “she helps the newsboys, and then she learns about their cause and wants to start helping them,” Stavros said.
For Newsies, “I am co-director (with Cross), and then I’m helping with some of the sets and I’m helping with fight choreography,” he said.
“The main part of the cast is (age) 15 and up, but we have one younger cast member who is 12,” Stavros added.
“We have kids from Bearden, CAK, Concord (Christian) some Farragut kids, homeschoolers. We have a range from all over.”
Overall, “We primarily do musicals,” Stavros said. “And for this show in particular, since it’s Newsies, it’s a rock-ish musical theater. It’s written by Alan Menkan, who did a lot of the Disney shows. So he did “Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” but it’s a lot more like a lot of anthem-type music.
“So for this show, it’s a lot of dance, a lot of singing — and all of that is at the same time,” he added. “Every song brings its own challenges, but it’s definitely a fun one. It was a fun one to go into and figure out how are we going to do this.”
As for ambition, “We have some actors who are leaning more toward being dancers because what the show presents; like you need some gymnastics background, you need some tap-dancing background,” Stavros said. “Then we have some more who are more primarily actors who are having to learn dance in this.
“So there’s a learning curve for basically everyone in the show, which is really cool,” he added. “Just help people grow in their talents and skills.”
On average, “We tend to do about three shows a year,” Stavros said. “We do a spring show and then our summer show, which this is our summer show, and then we usually do a fall show.
“What we do with our show is we have auditions, and so we do have some people that return and come back and work with us again — but it’s not like we’re a troupe, per se,” he added. “It’s more like we bring in new people to work with. Our spring show was ‘The Fantastics’ at Farragut Church of Christ (along Smith Road near Kingston Pike) in April. That one was a much smaller cast.”
Looking ahead, “I think this year we’re thinking more that it’ll be November,” Stavros said about the next production. “In the past we’ve done October, but I think we’re going to do November.
“That way we have some good time to really plan ahead and make sure it’s the best it can be,” he added.
As for the November show, “We’re still working on securing licensing for that one, so we’re not at liberty to announce that one yet,” he said.
Background
As an artistic director, “I have a hand in both the business and then also the creative side,” Stavros said. “So when we’re going into a show, it’s like, ‘Ok, how are we going to go forward and how are we going to present this show?’
“When we first started, we did a lot of classes and workshops for teens and stuff to help them grow in their skills,” Stavros added. “And then we then did the show ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ by C. S. Lewis. And then from there, we started doing more musicals and full shows just to see what we can do because both me and (Xandria) were younger.
“We’ve been working in theater our entire lives. I did my first audition when I was 6 years old.”
As a result, “we have gotten so much training from all these wonderful directors that we had worked with that we wondered if we had learned so much that we wanted to see what we could bring to the theater scene in the area,” he said.
