Sora Matta (center) as Ponyboy Curtis in The Outsiders. Bob (Joseph Pallo) and Randy (Cristian Ortiz) are on either side of them. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Cherry and Ponyboy are sizing each other up, trying to figure out exactly what life is like on the other side of the tracks. Cherry, eyes blazing, insists that their social cliques aren't so different. Ponyboy isn't sure: he takes in her high ponytail, smoothed pink blouse, long skirt and manicured red lips. It's not at all like his t-shirt, ripped jeans, greased-back hair.
“It may come as a surprise to you, but we’ve got troubles you haven’t even heard of!” she exclaims, the words red hot.
”Then why are we so different?" he asks aloud. His anger is warm, palpable. The words hang low in the black air for a moment, then disappear.
It's a question that hums through New Haven Academy's (NHA) production of The Outsiders, running Thursday through Saturday at the school's 444 Orange St. campus. Based on the 1967 novel of the same name, the play tells the story of two high school cliques—the "Socs" or Socials and the Greasers—fighting a class and culture war that is as old as capitalism itself.
In New Haven, where two versions of the city often exist side-by-side, it is surprisingly timely, with lessons around class, economic mobility (or lack thereof), and social status that remain onstage long after the curtain has closed. Tickets and more information are available here.
Joseph Pallo and Tomitsela Engel-Halfkenny.
"There are these kids that are so invested in being separate and being different that they don't realize how similar they really are," said director Ty Scurry, who has transformed the school's drama program from a scrappy underdog to an award-winning initiative that punches well above its weight. "They're so hell bent on being different, being at odds that they don't realize they are exactly the same, they just have different circumstances."
First written by S.E. Hinton in 1967, The Outsiders follows two rival groups of kids as their lives collide in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma. As it opens, “Greaser” Ponyboy Curtis (a winning Sora Matta) is walking home from the movies, his head somewhere between Tulsa and another stratosphere. Around him, night falls thick and black. So it's no wonder when a group of Socs approach him, ready for a fight.
It's a useful device for introducing both conflict and characters like Johnny (Christopher Samuels), Two Bit (Daniel Cardenas) and Sandy (Michelle Cochran), as well as Ponyboy's brothers Sodapop (Jeremiah McCullough) and Darry (Charles Jeffery) and rivals Bob (Joseph Pallo) and Randy (Cristian Ortiz). And thanks to the show’s blocking, it gives viewers an immediate sense of the violence these young people fear from—and enact on—one another.
In the way that Scurry chooses his plays, it doesn't shy away from these hard conversations: there's violence, suicidality, domestic abuse and death that characters all have to reckon with. In a trend that feels eerily familiar, the Socs make the Greasers feel small because they're poor (the use of "hood" in the show is surprisingly enduring), and the Greasers fight the Socs because their entitlement is stifling (a nod to Tomitsela Engel-Halfkenny and Solimar Quintanilla as Cherry and Marcia, who show real depth and empathy as characters who straddle that divide).
Top: Matta as Ponyboy and Christopher Samuels as Johnny. Bottom: Scurry.
Scurry, who read the book years ago, started thinking about staging the play earlier this year, after looking for a drama that could accommodate a large cast and speak immediately to the moment. At the time, he was wrapping up New Haven Academy's In The Heights, and knew that he needed a show with enough roles to field growing student interest. When a fellow drama teacher in a Facebook group suggested The Outsiders, something clicked. Almost two dozen kids showed up to audition.
"It hit home for them, in many ways," he said. The play, which recently opened with a musical version on Broadway, is something of a cult classic, with beloved written and film versions from the 1970s and 80s. "They kind of understood this separate but not equal war that's going on in the play. It was really nice to see them make that connection for themselves."
As tech rehearsal got underway Wednesday, several members of the cast noted how deeply it resonated with them. Charles Jeffery, a senior at NHA who plays Darry, thought about what it meant to protect and care for people, as his character does in the show. Because he’s the youngest brother at home, he ultimately channeled his dad, an English teacher whose meticulousness and discipline come from a place of love.
“I tried to channel that in my character,” he said.
Daniel Cardenas as Two Bit and Cristian Ortiz as Randy.
As real life high school students, they've also seen firsthand how mean their peers can be around material status symbols like new shoes and rotating outfits. To the original novel's class conflict, they also picked up on themes like racism and colorism that are very much alive in their schools, and in New Haven.
"People will just shame other people, bully other people, just because they don't have the same kind of money," said Matta, a senior at James Hillhouse High School and ACES Educational Center for the Arts. "Like, people will get shamed for wearing the same shirt twice in a week. As if washing machines don't exist! People just have this mindset that if you wear the same thing too close to each other, you're dirty."
In and out of rehearsal, Matta added, they've found themselves having conversations around everything from the creation of race and racism to the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions. In the show, the character Bob (Joseph Pallo) never quite manages to do that, with deadly consequences.
"I think it's been very intentional to pick shows that address some kind of social issue," said Madeleine Garley-Erb, a senior at James Hillhouse High School and ACES Educational Center for the Arts who is a member of the show's crew.
Solimar Quintanilla as Marcia and Tomitsela Engel-Halfkenny as Cherry.
Several of the cast members also found that the show pushed them out of their comfort zones. When he first got acquainted with the character Dallas, NHA senior Jamel Dolphin wasn't sure what to think. In the show, Dallas is a Greaser who seems as moody and indecent as he is tough. In reality, Dolphin is a fairly quiet guy. The role asked him to step into someone else's shoes—and gave him a masterclass in holding all the complicated parts of himself at once.
“It’s not completely out of my element, because I like these types of characters, but it’s different,” he said.
"I feel like it's helping me realize my identity as a person," chimed in Samuels. When he first read for the “Greaser” character Johnny, Samuels identified with the character's struggle with mental health, and his tendency to get into his head about things. But the play also helped him put things in perspective: Johnny faces domestic violence at home, which made Samuels think twice about the things that are going right in his life.
Matta added that Ponyboy may have initially been a stretch—the character is one of the most serious they've ever played—but was also a thrill to learn as his layers revealed themselves one by one. After working with Scurry for three years, they took the role as a chance to reflect and deepen their craft.
"He's a very interesting kid, cause he's not like everyone else," they said before a final tech rehearsal Wednesday. "He's very much in the middle. He doesn't like all this fighting stuff. He likes reading. He likes sunsets. He just wants to hang out with his friends, and everything's falling [apart] around him."
"I feel like Ponyboy thinks he's actually much older than he is," Matta added. "He has this mindset where he can't really be a kid anymore. It sucks that he feels the need to grow up so soon."
Jeremiah McCullough as Sodapop, Charles Jeffery as Darry and Matta as Ponyboy.
At a final tech rehearsal on Wednesday night, all of that was on display one last time before opening night. In the audience, Scurry donned a headset and buzzed between neat rows of chairs, a live wire. In the front row, several stuffed animals looked on expectantly as if they were eager attendees, waiting for the show to begin.
As the gym's lights came up, Matta-as-Ponyboy sat onstage, a receiver and antique phone cradled in one hand. To their right, a kind of hard-edged Darry emerged, Jeffrey working to tap into the tough love and discipline of his own dad. A beat, and they were flashing back to a tussle with Bob (Joseph Pallo) and Randy (Cristian Ortiz), who seem to have nothing better to do but pick on kids who are brainy but poor.
The play rolled forward, stakes mounting by the minute. Ponyboy got a beating on the way home, putting into relief just how real and physical the conflict was in the world of the show. Socs and Greasers ran into each other at the movies, and the result was nearly combustible. The rich kids (Pallo and Ortiz) identified something that they wanted, and tried to get it with devastating and violent consequences.
Jamel Dolphin as Dallas and Daniel Cardenas as Two Bit.
Along the way, cast members ushered in questions around entitlement, ownership, capitalism, violence, language and inherited trauma. When Sandy (Cochran) announced that "that's just the way that it works, they're Greasers," it seemed as if she could have been talking about New Haven in the present, lilting accent and all.
As the show opens this week, Scurry is a proud and self-described "drama poppa," he said. For him, the fall play has become something of a back-to-school intensive, showing young people how to put a work of theater together in just under six weeks. Because several of New Haven's public schools don't have drama programs, he's also opened the process up to any high schooler in the district, with students who come from James Hillhouse, Wilbur Cross, and the Sound School.
"It's what I wanted when I was in school," he said. It means that students move at breakneck speed—and learn to look out for each other in the process. By two weeks after auditions, they're expected to be fully blocked and off book. By a month in, the set is usually finished. This year, the cast faced an additional hurdle when Wilbur Cross, where the run had been planned, had a mold problem that made the auditorium unusable.
Instead of letting it move the show date, Scurry and the students doubled down and moved to New Haven Academy's gymnasium. They checked in with each other backstage and in the rehearsal room. They made magic out of what they had.
"It's really cool, because it reaffirms the fact that I've built this sort of family," Scurry said. "These kids, they look out for each other. Putting on good shows, shows that people enjoy, is one thing, but making sure that the students look out for each other, that students are passing their classes—that didn't happen for me in high school. Like, we'll figure something out to make sure that you're succeeding. Which is really, really nice."