THE REALITY OF FORCE

GG: What first attracted you all to this project?

DT: Adam Rapp saw a play I directed called Pass Over, which is also about young men, and all the ways society causes them to bottle things up and war against each other. After Adam saw the show, he asked me if I would be interested in doing a musical adaptation of The Outsiders. I’d never read the book, so my first engagement with the story was through the script [for the musical], and then I devoured the novel in one sitting and cried my eyes out. I listened to the entire score and the songs hit me deep in my soul. I was drawn to the fact that this is a world about boys seen through the eyes of a teenage girl; a 16-year-old Susie Hinton who saw these boys around her and saw the way society affected them, and wanted to expose those things to a larger audience. Susie’s gaze is so compassionate and honest. That’s what really pulled me in: the opportunity to tell a powerfully honest story about masculinity through a feminine gaze.

RK: Like Danya, I had never read the book growing up. My first experience with the project was reading Adam’s script and listening to Jonathan, Zach and Justin’s music. I had studied some of Adam’s plays in school, and was really struck by his visceral writing. And in terms of the themes of the show, brotherhood is obviously something that’s very important to me – the idea that we can accomplish much more together than we can alone.

JK: I read it in school; I guess I was the only one of us [laughter]. And because it’s such a meaningful story to so many people, it was exciting to dive in and see what we could bring to it. Beyond the emotional impact, it’s such an adventurous story, there’s so much plot, so much action, that it was exciting for us to scratch our heads and say, “how are we going to physicalize this? How are we going to make it as exciting and visceral as it is in the book and the movie? And how do we use the tools specific to theatre to do that?”

GG: And so what will the physical vocabulary of the piece look like?

DT: When this project came to me, [Rick and Jeff] immediately came into my mind because I knew they had a fight background in addition to being virtuosic choreographers. The movement vocabularies they create are extremely sensual. I want people who create worlds where all the senses are activated – desire, fear, anxiety, hope – and their work definitely brings all that to the forefront. There was an immediate sense of kinship between us. Our desire is to unite everything so it feels like one creative voice, so that it’s impossible to differentiate where my work ends and theirs begins, so it all feels like Ponyboy’s voice.

JK: Growing up, Rick and I studied different disciplines: theatre, dance and martial arts. And we fought for a while as well – kickboxing. When all of those disciplines started to meld together in our minds, one principle in particular stuck, which was: we don’t like to fake force. We like to re-direct force and momentum, so it’s not dangerous –so that it’s collaborative, practiced and controlled – but it’s real. There’s always an interest in the reality of force and how to shape that, whether that be for sensuality or conflict or joy.

RK: These are physical bodies on stage that are telling the story. We want to help the company tap into those physical impulses, and ultimately make it feel like the choreography isn’t choreography. We can collectively achieve this by focusing on technique and drilling to keep it safe. At the end of the day, practice makes permanent – not necessarily perfect, but it makes it permanent. And like in any discipline, if you know that the foundation and repetition are there, then you can fly.

GG: As anyone familiar with The Outsiders knows, a centerpiece of the story is the rumble between the Greasers and the Socs. How are you approaching that iconic scene in a way that feels made for this medium?

DT: I’m reluctant to say anything because I think that it’s best experienced. But the rumble scene is a centerpiece of the story for Ponyboy. We’ve been exploring how you make something that feels really real – that doesn’t feel like stage combat, so you tune out –but not so real that you get numb to it.

RK: The way in which most of us experience violence – if we’re lucky, and it’s not a real presence in our lives – is through cinema or television. And the tools that are available to filmmakers – foley, camera placement – are not part of stage musicals. We’re doing this fight head-to-toe, with a bunch of different angles from which the audience can experience it, with a lot of performers all onstage simultaneously. We need a different way into it, so we’ve been leaning into what is unique on stage. That includes stylizing part of the violence and using a more theatrical idiom. Evolving the fight past naturalism into something more heightened.

DT: Heightened, yes, but the word that always comes into my head is “expressive.” What we’re creating is a vessel for all the expansive and complicated feelings that explode in the fight. On the first day of rehearsal, Susie told us that a core theme of the story is “growth is betrayal,” and that has been reverberating in my mind since she said it. What a complicated and gnarly truth. The rumble in many ways is a fulcrum of that growth, that betrayal. After the rumble, nothing can ever be the same.

GG: You three have formed a very tight collaborative unit, but I’m curious about how the Kuperman brothers work together as choreographers. How does that process work to create a unified vision?

RK: It actually works similarly with us as a trio, as it does with me and Jeff as a duet. You have to take your ego out of it and build an environment where the best idea wins. And oftentimes, you can reach consensus pretty organically. Sometimes we have differences, but then time will almost always sort that out. So if you can cultivate an environment – and Danya does this brilliantly – where you can feel absolutely free to take a big swing, then it either works or, if it doesn’t, you have partners who are there to come up with the next idea. It just changes how you think about generating and editing, because those are two different parts of the mind.

JK: My collaboration with Rick has evolved as we’ve grown older. It’s always been respectful and generous, but we are brothers. But we’re no longer having what some might call “animated disagreements” in front of our collaborators [laughter]. Something we’ve developed over the years is making sure that that we achieve as much internal consensus as possible so that our collaborators aren’t getting conflicting notes or ideas. Like Rick said, we’re usually aligned in terms of our artistic impulses, but when we’re not, we know those are the most important moments of the show to excavate, because through that conflict of ideas comes a synthesis that is better than any single idea.

DT: Part of what draws me to work with Rick and Jeff is that they are dauntless in the face of tension or disagreement. It’s healthy and it elevates the storytelling and the collaborative experience. We also give each other an opportunity to build something before tearing it down. What they’re saying about ego is so true, and allowing dissent to come into the room means we can find the collective strongest impulse. And because I trust them both so much, if something doesn’t feel right for the story, it’s going to mean so much to me to hear that.

GG: How has Susie Hinton participated in the process? Given how impactful her novel and the movie have been, does that cast a shadow over you as you create this musical?

DT: I wouldn’t call it a shadow [that she casts], it’s like a light. The three of us went to Tulsa last summer, and we had an amazing lunch with Susie where we just got to talk and get to know her. She loves artists, actors, storytellers. The thing I took away most from meeting her, is she said, “Don’t be afraid, don’t try to please people. Have a vision. Make your version.” That felt like such a gift to me. She spoke to the whole company on the first day of rehearsal [via Zoom], and she gave the same gift to our actors. She told them, “Don’t try to play [the film’s stars]. Don’t try to be Matt Dillon; he already did that. Do your version. And most importantly: have fun.” It’s a really genuine and generous thing, and we’re all grateful. 