[NEohioPAL] Teen Company at Weathervane produces "The Outsiders"

[Melanie YC Pepe]

NEWS RELEASE
Contact: 330-836-2626


(August, 2008, Akron, Ohio.For Immediate Release) Weathervane Playhouse Summer Stock Teen ensemble present S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders on Friday, August 15 and Saturday, August 16 on Weathervane's Mainstage. Both of the performances begin at 7:00 PM. Call (330) 836-2626 for tickets and information.

Summer Stock is a program in which teenagers come together to fully produce, create, market, design and perform a play in just two weeks! It is quite a challenge, but the talents and accomplishments are quite impressive in the final performances. The effort that is put forth to produce such an extensive play together in two weeks is extraordinary. 

This year's Summer Stock production will be directed by Robert J. Putka, who has directed, produced and designed 49 plays at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, where he is an art teacher and the head of the Drama Department. This is his second project at Weathervane and we are pleased to welcome him here, once again. 

S. E. Hinton's powerful compassionate book about young people is the source of this play, as it was for the film version; which has become a modern classic. This stage adaptation deals with real people, seen through the eyes of Ponyboy, a young "Greaser" caught up in territorial battles between the have-it-made rich kid- the "Socs"- and his tough underprivileged "Greaser" family and friends. In the midst of urban warfare, Ponyboy can't forget a particular Robert Frost poem, which speaks of their fragile young lives, saying "Nothing gold can stay." 

This is a play about young people who have not lost hope. It's a play about the latent decency within us all. It's a play about "not losing touch with the residual slivers of gold within us all." "That guy who wrote the poem- he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just that when you get used to everything that it's day. The way you are, Pony. That's gold."

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