Sky Lakota-Lynch's 'The Outsiders' Opening Night Photo Diary
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“This opening night was a long time coming,” says Sky Lakota-Lynch, who stars as Johnny Cade in the new Broadway musical The Outsiders. “I’ve been with this show for six years, I began working on it in 2018, and it’s been such a long journey to get to this point—it’s unreal that it just finally happened!”
Six years isn’t such a long time, however, in the lifespan of the story. S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, about rival gangs of greasers (including Johnny) and rich kids in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was first published in 1967, and it was 16 years later that it was adapted to make a beloved film. Still, after years of working on the show, the cast was ready to share it with the world.
“It was a total celebration” Lakota-Lynch says of opening night. “There’s something blissful about seeing the show come to life and having audiences embrace it in such an amazing way. What more can you ask for?”
Here, Lakota-Lynch shares his opening night diary—with photos by Jenny Anderson—with T&C.
"I do have an opening night ritual: I meditate before every single show. For this character, I have to act with my energy, so it helps me to ground myself and not be worried about the outside world. Just having a moment of complete silence is so important for me."
"Shockingly, I'm not that nervous in The Outsiders. I was really nervous in Dear Evan Hansen because it was new to me and I was stepping into the role someone I was replacing. With The Outsiders, our director, Danya Taymor, builds such a comfort zone for people that cast feels like brothers and like we aren't necessarily acting every night. So, the nerves don't really come for me in The Outsiders. Honestly, I get more nervous after the show having to say hi to people than for the show itself."
"Before every show, we do circle up and one person makes a little speech, and then we all break to think about the theme of that speech, which could be freedom, peace, or love. Every single show we do this, no matter what."
"My friend and cast mate Tilly Evans-Krueger got this amazing thing called the Legacy Robe, which is a tradition in the theater. She puts it on and runs around us three times clockwise, and we all touch it for good luck, and then she visits our rooms in the robe and it blesses the show."
"I've known Brody [Grant, who plays Ponyboy] for five years. I knew Brody before he was even in the show because my understudy at Dear Evan Hansen was Brody's roommate in college. Lo and behold, here we are and Brody's one of my best friends. It's so rare that you get to work with people who you actually love, and there's not a singe person in my cast who I dread seeing."
"I got to be close with Angelina Jolie, who's our producer, because we went to Tulsa, Oklahoma together, and she asked to design my opening-night outfit. She and this amazing tattoo artist named Mark Mahoney designed the jacket and all the little patches. Next week I'm going to get a tattoo from Mark."
"This is our fight call, which lasts an hour every single day. Because the show is so physical, we have to make sure that no one gets hurt. So we get called an hour before curtain and we run through the physical numbers just to make sure that everything is set and that everyone's body is OK before we actually run it full speed during the show."
"Our stage door has been really crazy. People love The Outsiders, and the response has been wild. Every single night a crowd gathers and is screaming outside of our dressing room windows. This lady has been there every single night, and though I've been skipping the stage door because I've been so tired leading up to opening, I finally got her picture with me, which was awesome."
"Right before the curtain, before I got into my wig and makeup, Jenny was like, 'let me get one last picture of you before you go inside.' The Jacobs Theatre has this really cool indoor-outdoor alley and it connects to the Majestic and the Golden. It's historic, so we just took pictures there and it was awesome."
"After we did the show, we had an after party. There were a lot of cool people there: Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Jeremy O. Harris. It was very overwhelming, and I didn't stay too long. I had gotten a hotel room with my family and I was just like, you know what, I'm going to enjoy it for as long as I can and then I'm going to go home."
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