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A classic young adult novel that’s been adapted for film as well as Broadway, “The Outsiders” is coming to a Greensboro stage.
The musical, which won four Tony Awards - including Best Musical - and a pair of Drama Desk prizes last year, will be at the Tanger Center Dec. 9-14.
A coming-of-age tale set in Tulsa, OK, in the 1960s, “The Outsiders” is about a group of brothers and their struggles with a teenage gang rivalry: the working-class greasers versus the wealthier Socs. And there’s a young lady caught between.
While this may sound familiar, a member of the cast says it’s not what you might think.
“One of the things that I love about ‘The Outsiders’ is how it is truly a story about brotherhood,” said Seth Ajani, understudy for the roles of Johnny and Dallas.
“I think on the surface it presents like a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or like a ‘West Side Story’ but the central point is not love between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl, it’s love between this, like, family of brothers.
“And people still die and tragedy still happens but I think that it is important for young men to see strong love between men that is platonic and for them to know that is something that they can have.”
Ajani, who grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has solid ties to the Triad.
“Greensboro North Carolina is a piece of home for me,” he said. It’s where his paternal grandparents, the Rev. Ronnie and Ardelia McLaughlin, live.
And he is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. It was during his senior year there that he met and signed with the manager who sent him to audition for “The Outsiders.”
“This experience has been nothing short of a dream,” said Ajani. “From the minute that I met our director Danya (Taymor) I knew that I really, really wanted to be a part of the project. And so getting the call and the offer was - I felt like I was on cloud nine.”
But he well might have chosen a very different career.
“I spent a lot of my youth thinking I was gonna be an engineer because I love science, I love math, my dad was an engineer, so it all just kinda made sense,” he explained. But after doing some acting and singing in high school, he took a friend’s advice and went to a summer program at UNCSA.
“That was like the best four weeks of my life,” he said, and the decision was made.
This is Ajani’s first tour. While he hasn’t been called on to take the stage yet, he stays ready, lending his voice from backstage to enhance the on-stage sound.
“That helps me to keep my instrument tuned,” he said.
In addition to that sound wizardry, Ajani noted there is magic in the show’s interplay of scenic and lighting design as well as its props.
“All of the technical elements blend together in a way that it is phenomenal to see in person,” he said. “Almost all of the sets for our show are made with tires and planks, so try to catch how creative the team was with making everything happen.
- Tracy Fields is a veteran journalist and Greensboro native who writes entertainment news for the Carolina Peacemaker.
“‘The Outsiders’ is not about glitz and glamour. It is not about spectacle, although there is some spectacle. It is gonna feel like real people telling a real story, and I think that that is something that we have that not every musical has.”
