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✨THEATRE BITCHES LISTEN UP✨

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love it when musical titles r just commands. like u better be more chill, ride the cyclone, and come from away or I swear to god.

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Darren Criss and Helen J Shen | Maybe Happy Ending | A new musical reminding us that love is never obsolete 🤖💜🤖 | April 17, 2025 | 📸 via MHE

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Ok one more theatre post. You can now watch the proshot of the donmar warehouse next to normal revival on PBS through the end of June. Thought provoking, Pulitzer winning etc etc definitely worth the watch even if you’re a casual musical theatre enjoyer

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Spotify…???

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If you guys liked the whole "Stephs flannel matches Peter's suspenders and bow tie" thing then this costuming detail is in tgwdlm gonna fuck you up.

When we get our first scene with Paul and Emma, the two are dressed in their respective main outfits. These are the ones people tend to associate with them.

But throughout the show, as they get closer and bond, their outfits become more and more similar. Pretty soon Emma's lost the apron

Then at the professor's house, Paul loses the jacket

and by the time McNamara is infected, Paul has his sleeves rolled up and Emma's bow tie has come undone.

At this point, the two are at their most aesthetically similar, and also the closest they've been the entire show. This is moments before the helicopter crash and their failed kiss. They remain this way for a good chunk of time...until Paul comes back

It's like some fast-paced foreshadowing. Emma remains in her changed state, the same as her character, but Paul is back to square one. He's wearing the same outfit he was when they met, and they no longer align. She doesn't know who he is anymore.

I don't know if this was intentional (and if it was, no one explained it to Jon) but it plays out so damn well.

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I’mma sing you a sacred psalm

On your knees, pray along…

—

We did a Hatchetfield marathon recently and my decade-long on-again off-again Starkid obsession came ROARING back!! Grace Chasity was designed to appeal to everything I love to paint, so naturally here I am ✨

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IT"S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!! Check out my animation of the title song from Nerdy Prudes Must Die, a horror musical from @teamstarkid You can watch the FULL stage show on their youtube channel!

https://youtu.be/PG3RDdyD_GQ?si=Rhxg6asT0MMoTTXd This clip features Jon Matteson as Richie, Will Branner as Max! The story and script is by Nick and Matt Lang, with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim!

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the toursie I slept with is engaged!! v happy for him tbh, last time he messaged me I had just recently gotten serious with my now-husband & thought he was still with his girlfriend so I suggested we all go out together & then he was like “oh we broke up” and unfollowed me lol

but I still wanna be buddies, he’s really cool & we have lots of shared interests AND his fiance seems like someone I’d really get along with too! maybe I should reach back out but idk if he’s still touring with the same show he was when we met like 7 years back, last I knew he was but that was last spring? idk I actually didn’t see the show either of the times it came thru here lol, maybe if he’d comped me a ticket I would’ve but seeing shows is expensive

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ANN-MARGRET as Medda Larkson

NEWSIES (1992) dir. kenny ortega

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Duane Street December Day 2: Favorite Character

A/N: I got carried away and this is way longer than I meant it to be but I've been thinking about this particular subject for about five years now so I'm very passionate about it. Hope you guys like it!

Damian Vasquez was seven years old when he saw Manhattan for the first time. Mamá was pregnant with Bianca (though she didn’t know it yet), Papá hadn’t lost the glimmer of hope in his eyes, and he and his sisters hadn’t yet known the sharp pangs that came with hunger. There was nothing but nervous excitement to be felt in all of them. He’d bounced his way through the registry line and fidgeted so much during the medical inspection that the doctor laughed and called him “enthusiastic,” a word his tongue still tripped over from time to time. When they finally left Castle Garden and stepped foot in Battery Park, Damian had a suitcase in one hand and Gabriela’s much smaller hand in the other. They were a happy pack of soon-to-be-eight (and later nine) ready to take on a new world as a family.

And things were good, at least for a while. Bianca was born and made her preference for her big brother blatantly clear, something he bragged about to just about anyone willing to listen. Then Inés came and hated him for the entire first year of her life, to the delight of his sisters old enough to understand what was going on around them. He picked up English quickly, though not as quickly as Cataleya and Maricela did, and did well in school when he could understand the concepts. He made friends with the boy down the hall and his neighbors marveled at how a boy with so much energy could be so quiet. They were safe and happy and loved.

Then Papá died. The two of them had been walking through the streets (or rather, Papá was walking; Damian was shadow fencing with an old cane he’d found in the alleyway next to their building) when a spooked carriage horse came charging down the street. His father was safe, but Damian wasn’t, and the next thing he knew, his father was shoving him so hard that he crashed into a streetlamp on the other side of the road. He’d turned around at just the right moment to see the horse trample his father. A woman nearby had grabbed him and tried to turn his face into her stomach so he didn’t see anything else, but he still heard the sharp crack of a wagon wheel rolling over Papá’s ribcage.

Damian lied when Mamá asked him about the incident through her sobs, reassuring her that he didn’t see the initial accident and strangers made sure that he never saw the body. He loved his mother and would spare her that pain. But he saw his father’s broken body every night when he laid down to sleep, saw his father’s once lively brown eyes blank and empty every time he closed his own. Lying to his mother and the younger girls was easy, but Xiomara always knew when he wasn’t telling the truth. They’d shared a womb for nine months and a life for ten years, and maddeningly, she knew him better than he knew himself. Still, he was thankful for her hand pressing between his shoulder blades and the gentle sound of her voice as she tried to comfort him when he woke up crying.

It broke him for a while, though he never really told anyone. He’d sat in confession once, a few months after the accident, and asked the priest if it was a sin to lie to his mother like he had. Padre Nuñez went silent for a minute before gently telling him, “In this instance, my son, lying is a kindness,” and Damian felt at least part of the gaping wound in his heart close. It was a little embarrassing, crying in the booth the way he did and coming out with red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, but no one said anything, and the next time he saw Padre Nuñez, the priest shook his hand like he was a man and not the little boy he still felt like.

Things got a little better as time went on. Everyone called him “the man of the house,” and he started selling papers to earn the title, which is how he ended up with the nickname “Bumlets.” He’d wanted to impress the older boys in the paper line and tried smoking one of their cigar butts. Of course, being eleven years old and entirely unused to smoking, he’d coughed so hard he nearly threw up, and another boy around his age had to hold his shoulders to keep him from falling over. It wasn't a fun experience, but he’d met Swifty that day and found out that getting a nickname from the newsies meant that you were one of them, which made him feel significantly better about the whole ordeal.

Mamá died a few months later. The doctor had called it “pneumonia,” a word he could say but not quite spell at twelve years old. He’d thought losing Papá would be the worst pain he would ever feel, but losing Mamá was like a molten knife to the chest. When Papá died, at least, they could still be a family, but with Mamá gone, the girls were sent away on the orphan train and Swifty hooked an arm around his shoulders and led him to the lodging house at No. 9 Duane Street. Kloppman had been old even then, but his eyes were kind and he wouldn’t let the older boys give him a hard time. It was almost like having a father again.

The girls, thankfully, were adopted into a farming family upstate instead of being sent out to kingdom come like Skittery’s siblings were, and Bumlets got to write to them once a week. The mother, a Russian-born woman named Anya, had gone through the orphan train herself and insisted on keeping them in contact, and the way Xiomara told it, her husband knew better than to argue when his wife set her mind to something.

Anya had written to him once, promising to take care of his sisters and to love them with everything she had. She’d enclosed a picture of the girls in the letter: Xiomara standing proud with his eyes and smile, Cataleya staring cross-eyed at the camera because she knew it used to make him laugh, Gabriela and Maricela hanging onto one another while they laughed, Bianca waving at the camera and smiling as big as she could, and little Inés with her face scrunched up from what he could only imagine was laughter. He’d cried a little when he saw it, but no one judged him, and Skitts even smiled when he saw it, even if it was a little sad.

Life with boys was different than life with girls, but Bumlets was nothing if not adaptable. It helped that he was quiet and not one to cause trouble, making it easy to make friends. Swifty, of course, was his oldest and closest friend, but Skittery was a close second and Pie-Eater after that. Even the boys he wasn’t close with still looked out for him, with Kid Blink once punching out an older boy who’d decided that he didn’t like the fact that Bumlets was Puerto Rican and thought the best way to show it would be to jump him. He’d gone to Kloppman later and begged him to show him how to throw a punch so he would be able to return the favor if the occasion called for it.

The younger kids followed him around sometimes: Tumbler imprinted on Skitts like a baby duck when he got to Duane Street, but sometimes the kid needed someone with a little more energy to wrangle him; Boots was probably one of the smartest guys he’d ever met, and his chest ached at the thought that people would dismiss him based on the color of his skin; Snipeshooter played tough most of the time, but he’d still crawl into bed next to him when he had a bad night; and Charlie, a sweet little Irish kid with more nicknames than Bumlets could remember (he’d heard Flipper, Blanket, and even Crazy Legs before deciding to just call him Charlie), looked at him like he hung the moon and started combing his hair the same way he did, which was equal parts endearing and exasperating.

Life as a newsie wasn’t easy, and he never shied away from that fact when people asked, but Bumlets found that the brotherhood and friendships he had made it easier. Mamá had always told him to remember the good things in life because they were the things worth living for and every night before he fell asleep, he’d recite a list of the things that brought him joy, no matter how small: fencing with Skittery in the morning on their way to the distribution center, helping Swifty teach Tumbler and Charlie how to do backflips, the well-worn dime novels the boys shared amongst themselves, lunch at Tibby’s with the guys, and of course, the photograph tucked under his pillow with six smiling faces staring out at him.

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Mornings in Brooklyn🌅

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"but this female character has so little personality in canon what am i supposed to do with her!!1!!" the newsies fandom in 2014 was giving rich backstories and elaborate personalities to nameless white guy #35. learn. adapt

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the king of brooklyn is a black girl!

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Do you think the side of tiktok that’s obsessed with butch greaseball knows that female Spot Conlon was in that same theater about a year and a half ago

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instagram wasn’t impressed by this meme, pls validate my stupid humor, tumblr

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aw man

just was reminded that Bryce Pinkham is coming to a local con soon & I really wanted to get my GGLAM playbill signed since I didn’t stagedoor back in 2015 when I saw it on broadway

but I truly dislike the hellaverse fandom SO much that I’m not willing to put myself through standing in that line for an autograph ):