Actress Angelina Jolie has long been much more than that. From the image of big brands to a symbol of humanitarian work with her work in Cambodia and her representation in UNHCR, for which she was ambassador between 2001 and 2012, Jolie has always shown that she has interests beyond acting. She also tried her hand at directing with films like In the land of blood and honey either Invincible (Unbroken), But in recent years it has specialized in another sector, with which it is achieving new successes: production, and specifically theater production.
In reality, Jolie has been developing her work as an executive producer for years, to a greater extent with the films she directed but also in others such as Maleficent and its sequel, or films in which she did not even act but with which she had a great political and moral commitment. This is what happened with The bread of war –animated film about the war in Afghanistan that was nominated for an Oscar- or recently the documentary We dare to dream, about the IOC Refugee Olympic Team that participated in the Tokyo Olympics.
This time Angelina Jolie has changed the film sets for the stage, specifically those of Broadway musicals. With her latest work as a producer, the musical adaptation of The Outsiders, the 49-year-old actress has once again tasted the honeys of success, this time through the Tony Awards. At the gala for these world theater awards, Jolie and her team went on stage to collect the award for Best Musical Show. An award that she shared with the actors, but also with her daughter Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, alongside the one who posed with the trophy and who has also participated in the musical as a production assistant, thus following in her mother’s footsteps.
Originally written by Susan Eloise Hinton when she was just 15 years old when she started writing it, The Outsiders It is one of the key novels of the United States of the 1960s, winning literature awards such as the New York Herald Tribune. It had such significance in its portrayal of adolescents being violent and drinking and smoking that it was banned in some study centers and libraries of the time, which only gave greater fame to the novel in its controversial condition. A few years later, in 1983, Francis Ford Coppola would adapt the novel to film with a cast full of promising young people: Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estévez, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell or Patrick Stewart. So many years later, the play continues to triumph on the Broadway stage.
“SE Hinton wrote The Outsiders in high school and, half a century later, he continues to speak to us. Society changes, but the experience of being an outcast is universal. For any young person, any person, who feels marginalized, they are not wrong to see what is unfair. They are not wrong to want to find their own path. When the cast raises their voices, I hope it inspires many of the viewers to value theirs,” commented Angelina Jolie herself, aware of the importance and depth of the work and how it largely anticipated issues such as toxic masculinity. and the deconstruction of this through characters who, although they had their vices, represented a marginal society that also needed its story to be heard.
