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Identified for his or her witty and athletic motion fashion, Canadian brothers Rick and Jeff Kuperman educated as competitors dancers and martial artists earlier than launching their careers with downtown New York Metropolis exhibits that includes, as Rick places it, “very small budgets and big quantities of collaboration and creativity.” They’ve since choreographed off-Broadway productions of Cyrano and Alice by Coronary heart (the latter earned them a Drama Desk nomination), in addition to final yr’s A24 movie Dicks: The Musical. Nonetheless, that downtown scrappiness is a mainstay of their mindset and aesthetic, making them the perfect choreographic match for The Outsiders, a brand new Broadway musical based mostly on the e-book by S.E. Hinton and movie of the identical title, a couple of group of teenybopper outcasts—together with a trio of, sure, brothers—in 1967 Tulsa.
The Outsiders is without doubt one of the most generally assigned items of required studying in American faculties, in addition to a touchstone movie of the Nineteen Eighties. What was your relationship to it previous to your work on the musical?
Jeff: I learn it in center college, and it was one of many first books that actually moved me emotionally as a child. So when the script hit our desk, I used to be super-excited to dive into it. Particularly with the themes of brotherhood so entrenched within the e-book, I believed this might be a fantastic piece for Rick and me to deal with.
Rick: I missed the memo as a result of I really had by no means heard of this story. My first touchpoint with the challenge was Adam [Rapp]’s script. I used to be an enormous fan of Adam’s writing and had studied loads of his performs in faculty. It was cool to be launched to the world of The Outsiders by his eyes. It’s very visceral and hard-hitting, and that actually resonated with me.
You talked about brotherhood as a key theme within the story. How did being a choreography workforce allow you to develop the motion for the present?
Rick: Choreography does loads of the world-building in The Outsiders. There’s social dance on this planet, and there’s loads of battle choreography. Having a associate to have the ability to first create the fabric on is super-important and helps make that choreography three-dimensional.
Jeff: Rick and I studied martial arts as youngsters and thru faculty. The martial side of the choreography is one thing that you must do with a associate. We’re actually all in favour of the usage of power—not faking power, however redirecting power and momentum. You possibly can’t do this alone. It’s good to have a brother you’re not afraid to roughhouse with. It’s type of a vital piece of this choreography.
I think about that appears and feels a bit of bit completely different than the key battle sequence within the movie.
Rick: We’re working in a distinct medium. Within the theater, we have to use a distinct set of instruments to make the battle evocative, and one of many ways in which we’ve thought to try this is to actually stylize or render the battle in a extra expressionistic mode than pure realism.
Jeff: One of many traces that actually caught out to me, upon my first learn of the script, was “the fists detonate into the boys’ flesh.” That concept of detonating into flesh sparked an thought about sound design and the way a lot of the best way that we interpret violence once we see it’s aurally, really, and in order that was the jumping-off level for us once we began to create the rumble.
Rick: Proper. It’s the climax, so each division—surroundings, lighting, choreography, sound design, all of it—is hopefully appearing in unison to render this climactic second for the story.
The Outsiders is ready in 1967. How did that affect the choreography?
Jeff: Whereas we’re confronting some tough truths concerning the previous and the current, there’s a very actual sense of affection all through. However it was a fraught interval politically and racially, and we’re not shying away from that, particularly within the rumble. We’re making an attempt to lean into choreographic metaphor for the cyclicality of violence that we’re trapped in, and we’re analyzing how we break that cycle lest it proceed to devour us.
So many of those characters, particularly the Greasers, have such an actual love for one another, however they don’t have the vocabulary with which to specific it. So it’s expressed bodily, it’s expressed by play, it’s expressed by violence.
The Greasers transfer very in another way from the Socs. The Socs are a bit of bit extra put-together, and their traces are a bit of bit straighter, a bit of bit extra refined, and the Greasers have a way more hard-hitting edge to them. An awesome pleasure of this challenge has been leaning into the individualism of every performer, permitting them to actually carve their very own observe by this present. Their fingerprints are throughout this factor, and we wouldn’t have it another manner. As a result of one of many most important themes of the present is: How does a person retain that core essence of themself even after they’re amongst a gaggle of like-minded people?
The choreography’s interplay with the set—the bodily house, the objects—how did that come collectively?
Jeff: The very first workshop the place The Outsiders was put up on its toes, we didn’t have very a lot. I feel we had a few rolling containers, a few theater cubes, a couple of very particular props. However we ended up staging a lot, utilizing sound and music and containers, simply to see what it’d really feel like in a black-box theater, and loads of that ethos carried over into the manufacturing.
What are your favourite numbers from the present?
Jeff: My favourite conventional quantity might be “Grease Acquired a Maintain on You.” It’s Ponyboy’s induction into the gang of Greasers and his anointment, so to talk, as they put grease in his hair for the primary time and say “You’re actually a part of us.” It’s an opportunity for every of the Greasers to present the viewers a style of who they’re, what makes them particular—and we get to specific that by how they transfer.
Rick: Loads of the tentpoles are actually particular to us: the rumble, the hearth, and a bit known as “Run, Run, Brother,” which is the nearer of Act I. However there’s additionally a extremely brief quantity known as “Bother” proper earlier than the rumble, and it’s actually succinct. The best way that Susie describes this second within the e-book is that firstly, everybody’s dressed of their Sunday finest to prepare for the battle, which is simply such a putting element: These characters placed on their finery solely to return and do battle and stain it with blood. There’s this enormous sense of power and group identification, and I suppose a type of tribalism, actually, that unleashes this enormous quantity of physicality. Within the film, you’ll see Tom Cruise bust a backflip for what looks like no motive, nevertheless it’s grounded within the thought of simply a lot power. Within the e-book she talks a couple of character having educated on the YMCA in gymnastics and [teaching the others]. So “Bother” is a bit of style of some virtuosity when the Greasers coalesce as they get able to do battle, and it’s actually enjoyable physicality in motion.
What do you hope audiences take away from The Outsiders?
Rick: Ponyboy is such a resilient character. There’s a lot tragedy that befalls him, and but he makes this unbelievable and highly effective option to preserve going, and to seek out magnificence and optimism regardless of unbelievable challenges. We are able to all be taught one thing from Ponyboy in that respect.
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