Newsies opened at the Nederlander Theater on March 29, 2012.
It became the fastest Disney Broadway show to turn and profit and thought it was originally supposed to be a limited engagement, it ended up running for 1,005 performances.
For the productions of Newsies on Broadway, the song "King of New York" has many tap dancing solos on tables. However, the sound of the wood was often drowned out and not heard in the theater, so microphones were taped to the bottom of the tables so the audience could hear every step!
Newsies is inspired by the real like "Newsboy Strike of 1899". The strike was led by a charismatic young newsboy named Kid Blink who rallied orphan and runaway newsies on a two week long action against Pulitzer, Hearst and other powerful publishers. In many ways, it was the beginning of the Child Labor Movement.
Among other real-life strikers were Racetrack Riggins, Mush Meyers and Spot Conlon
Many newsgirls also participated in the strike as well, which is a fact that is not included in the musical.
Although Katherine is a fictional character, she is named after Pulitzer's actual daughter, Katherine Ethel, who died from pneumonia in 1884 at the age of 2, fifteen years before the strike happened.
In the original Broadway production, 42 sheets of paper are either danced on or torn during the riot sequence each night. That amounts to 42,210 sheets over the course of it's Broadway run. Don't worry....all of those papers were either recycled or given to audience members as a souvenir!
There are also 150 other specially made newspapers that are used in each performance. These papers were carefully cared for so that they could be used for multiple performances.
The show is based on the book "Children of the City" by David Nasaw.
Newsies has a large group of dedicated fans, called Fansies, whose enthusiasm helped push the show to Broadway.
When the Broadway engagment of Newsies was announced, chatter on Twitter reached 14 million people!
The official Newsies Facebook page reached 100,000 fans before opening night!
