Director Danya Taymor Says Bringing 'The Outsiders' To Broadway Felt Like 'Kismet'
When S.E. Hinton published “The Outsiders” in 1967, many were surprised to learn that an author who so deftly probed young men’s experiences with toxic masculinity and class conflict was a woman.
As a female director, Danya Taymor knew she’d similarly be going against expectations in bringing the musical adaptation of “The Outsiders” to Broadway. After all, the 1983 movie version of Hinton’s story was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Going back to the source material, however, Taymor felt an instant “kinship” with Hinton’s coming-of-age tale.
“My older brother, Ari, had his friends over at our house all the time when I was growing up, and I saw them in so many facets of being,” Taymor told HuffPost. “I saw them vulnerable, I saw them aggressive. I saw them interact with girls.”
Hinton “felt compelled to write about these boys who were her chosen family with a compassionate gaze,” she continued. “I tried to direct this thinking of my 15-year-old self, because the story has an ability to put you back in touch with that self, when so many formative things happened.”
Featuring a score by folk-rock duo Jamestown Revival and writer Justin Levine, “The Outsiders” opened on Broadway in April. At Sunday’s Tony Awards, the show is nominated in 12 categories, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical for Taymor.
Like Hinton’s book, the musical is told from the perspective of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis (played by Brody Grant), one of three orphaned brothers and a member of a working-class “Greasers” gang in Tulsa, Oklahoma, circa 1967.
Ponyboy is thrust into the center of rising tensions between the Greasers and a rival, upper-middle-class gang called the “Socs” after bonding with Sherri “Cherry” Valance (Emma Pittman), whose boyfriend, Bob Sheldon (Kevin William Paul), is the Socs’ ringleader. When a reckless altercation between the Greasers and the Socs ends in tragedy, Ponyboy and his best friend, Johnny Cade (Sky Lakota-Lynch), flee town.
The threat of violence still looms, however, resulting in the much-buzzed-about “rumble” sequence, which involves dirt, rain, stage blood and some of the most breathtaking choreography on Broadway.
“The Outsiders” marks Taymor’s return to Broadway after directing the 2021 play “Pass Over.” Playwright Adam Rapp approached Taymor about “The Outsiders” after catching an early “Pass Over” performance ― an experience that Taymor now views as “kismet.”
“For ‘Pass Over’ to be the project that connected me to ‘The Outsiders’ just felt right, because it’s so representative of who I am as an artist,” she said. “I trusted that.”
In translating “The Outsiders” to the stage, Taymor pored through photo books on rural America by Larry Clark and Richard Avedon, while she and the cast visited Hinton, now 75, in her Oklahoma home. Also critical was the involvement of Angelina Jolie, who joined the creative team as a producer following the show’s 2023 run in La Jolla, California. In fact, it was Jolie’s 15-year-old daughter, Vivienne, who convinced her mom to sign on.
Praising Jolie’s “rigorous artistry,” Taymor says the Oscar winner was a “fearless” presence in rehearsals and made herself accessible to the show’s mostly young cast. As for Vivienne, she noted: “Having an actual teenager around giving us feedback on what she was seeing was so important.”
Taymor’s other professional guides include her aunt, film and theater director Julie Taymor, known for the stage adaptation of Disney’s “The Lion King” and the 2002 Frida Kahlo biopic “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek.
“To see a woman succeed at the level she has, and with the integrity that she has, definitely had a profound effect on me,” Taymor said of her aunt. “She’s always encouraged me not to stay trapped in the box that the industry wants to put you in.”
Moving forward, Taymor would also like to try her hand at film, though she has no intention of abandoning theater. While “The Outsiders” continues to draw enthusiastic crowds on Broadway, she’s excited to see the show staged regionally and in schools across the U.S. in years to come.
“One of my hopes is that people will take it and make it their own and cast it in a way that feels necessary for their communities,” she said. “It speaks to everybody as an equal.”
“The Outsiders” is now playing at New York’s Jacobs Theatre.
