Watch The Outsiders Stars, Producer Angelina Jolie and More Celebrate a Golden Broadway Opening

On April 11, the new musical The Outsiders celebrated its opening at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Broadway.com was there to speak with the stars, director Danya Taymor and Angelina Jolie, who joins the Broadway community as a first-time producer.

“I am so honored to be a part of this family,” said Jolie. “I've been a little girl in awe of Broadway my whole life. I haven't even had the chance to even do it myself as an artist and I couldn't do what these artists do on stage every night. I am very humbled by them, by this process, by what I've learned from them what it is really to work on Broadway.”

“To get to be an artist and get to do something I love that I'm truly passionate about, a story I really connect with—that doesn't come around all the time,” said Brody Grant, who plays Ponyboy Curtis. The show has “the energy exchange of a concert,” he added. Sky Lakota-Lynch, who plays the role of Johnny Cade, agrees: “The audience energy has been insane. I'm not used to audiences like that.”

As Emma Pittman, who plays Cherry Valance, points out, the novel of The Outsiders, a touchstone text about adolescent masculinity, was written by S.E. Hinton—a 15-year-old girl. “And you can just taste it, you can feel it, you can feel the feminine energy in the boys,” she said.

On the red carpet, Taymor reflected on that feminine energy too, and on allowing her actors “to be soft and tender and vulnerable. I think that if more—not just boys—if more people were encouraged to be that way, society might be a little bit healthier of a place.”