The Outsiders still has inside track on teen angst
When it was published in 1967, S.E. Hinton’s coming of age novel The Outsiders hit a nerve and that nerve has been smarting ever since.
This story of teenage gangs in Oklahoma in 1965 is still considered one of the 100 most controversial American novels and continues to be banned in some North American schools.
Some watchdog organizations find the idea of gang violence and the street slang in the novel disturbing, yet it remains a popular novel with young adult readers.
In 1983, Francis Ford Coppola turned it into a film starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze and Emilio Estevez, and a decade later it was adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel, who specialized in creating stage versions of popular novels and films, including To Kill a Mockingbird.
With The Shakespeare Company’s Karl Sine at the helm, StoryBook Theatre is bringing Hinton’s iconic teen characters to life until Feb. 24 at the Beddington Arts Centre (375 Bermuda Drive N.W.).
Robert Morrison plays the story’s central character, Ponyboy, a teen from the wrong side of the tracks whose gang, the Greasers, is at war with the Socs, the rich upper-class kids.
Morrison admits it’s difficult to get his head around the fact Hinton was only 15 years old when she began writing The Outsiders and 18 when it was published, the same age he is.
“It really blows my mind to think she had such incredible insights. I know at 15, I didn’t have those kinds of insights into my own life, let alone life in general.
“She tapped into so manyuniversal truths which is why the novel still resonates today,” says Morrison, who concedes “it might even be more relevant today considering its themes.”
The characters in the two gangs can’t understand why they are so different when they seem to like all the same kind of things. It’s only when they start seeing the similarities in each other that there is hope for them and that’s pretty much what society is dealing with these days.
“We have to look for similarities, not differences, in people around us.
Morrison says it’s important that he and his fellow cast members are older than the characters they play in The Outsiders.
“As young adults, we’ve got hindsight to our advantage. I just have to look back four years at when I was 14 and I really can understand what Ponyboy is going through.
“I was like him back then. I was so full of questions. I wanted answers. I wanted to understand everything that was going on around me.”
One thing Morrison knows for certain is he wants a career in theatre. “I’ve finished high school and I’m taking this year to get as much stage experience as possible and I’ve auditioned for several university theatre programs. I’ll know in the spring where I’m going.”
Morrison was nine years old when he joined Calgary Young People’s Theatre for a show called Warm Stories for Cold Nights. He’s done 15 shows for the group. “Calgary Young People’s was where I found my acting home.”
Morrison was in StoryBook The- atre’s production of Lord of the Flies last season and has starred opposite Sine in Theatre Calgary’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Shakespeare Company’s Titus Andronicus.
“Karl is the ideal director for this production of The Outsiders because he speaks the language of actors. He knows how to communicate what he wants and what the production needs in language we understand.
“He never speaks down to us. He speaks to us as actors.”
Morrison purposely avoided watching Coppola’s film because he didn’t want it to influence his acting. He also hadn’t read the novel but as soon as he heard Sto- ryBook was producing the stage version with Sine directing, he made reading it a priority.
“I call the novel authentically dated. Even though it was written 50 years ago, it still feels so natural and that’s true of the stage version which is already 30 years old.”
Morrison promises StoryBook’s The Outsiders will appeal not only to teenagers, but to adults as well because “the adult themes in The Outsiders are super approachable.”
All of the special school performances of The Outsiders are sold out as are several of the evening shows. Tickets for the remaining performances are available at storybooktheatre.org.