Interview: Travis Roy Rogers, Darrel Curtis in THE OUTSIDERS at The Fox Theatre

The first national tour of THE OUTSIDERS, fresh off its acclaimed Broadway run and Tony wins, is coming to The Fox Theatre as part of the 2025/2026 Regions Bank Broadway in Atlanta season November 25 – 30. I caught up with Travis Roy Rogers, who makes his professional debut as Darrel Curtis in the production, to talk about his journey from Burbank to Broadway, the heart of the show, and what it means to bring this story to Atlanta audiences.

BWW: Travis, thanks so much for taking time to speak with me. I’m excited to hear more about you, THE OUTSIDERS, and its Atlanta run at The Fox!

Travis Roy Rogers: Thanks!

To start, I'd love to hear more about your journey in the theatre.

I’m from Los Angeles - born and raised in Burbank. My dad is a sound engineer and mixer for post-production sound. We're a very artistic family, but it didn't really feel like that growing up. Obviously, my dad working in sound, my mom is an artist and has an art degree. My brother has now grown up and is in film editing. But we were really a sports-oriented family growing up.

And then I found my way into performing just through friends who were doing community theater, who I saw their production and was like, oh, I'll give it a try, do a little social fun thing with my friends and then kind of caught the bug. My second show I did, I played the Artful Dodger in OLIVER!, which is a classic, and my grandpa, who is from London and who had a story like Oliver came to the show. I remember that was the moment where I saw how my grandpa had such a personal experience watching me play the Artful Dodger and was moved. And that was kind of the moment where I was like, oh wow, this is a little more than just my fun social hour with friends. And from that point on, I just was in love with it. I went to Carnegie Mellon and graduated in 2024 and I loved it. That was the dream for me, to go to Carnegie Mellon, and it surpassed my expectations. I just had the best college experience, seriously, that you can have. I did a year in New York after I graduated, just kind of grinding and auditioning until something hit, and that was THE OUTSIDERS.

Have you ever been to Atlanta before? Is this going to be the first time you're in the city?

This will be my first time. My brother lives in Greenville, South Carolina now and works a lot out of the Atlanta market, in different film productions, So he's in Atlanta a lot. I've been hearing a lot about Atlanta for a while now, and obviously I've known about the Fox Theatre, and I'm very excited to play it. But yeah, it'll be my first time in Atlanta.

Let's talk about THE OUTSIDERS. I think it's probably familiar to a lot of our readers because of the book, the film, the Broadway run and the Tony Awards, etc. But for those who don't know anything about it, how would you describe the story to them?

I think THE OUTSIDERS plays on so many universal themes. The big takeaway for me playing Darrel, the older brother, is just the theme of family. And there's two kinds of family: there's your given family, who you're born into, and your chosen family, the people you choose to surround yourself with. And I think that this story reckons with that moment when you choose your given family. You're forced to choose them. This moment where you're at a crossroads and there's a beautiful choosing that takes place with these brothers where they just say, “no, we must do this together,” you know? And then there’s the whole Greasers versus the Socs with the Greasers being the chosen family. They're the outsiders in Tulsa, they're the low-income, afterthoughts of the community. The identity and the empowerment that they get from each other is so real in the story.

Tell us a little bit about playing Darrel. What's he like? Is there anything in particular that has inspired your portrayal of him?

Darrel has all these responsibilities, but he's a kid too. He's 20 years old, faced with providing for his brothers, and since this story takes place not even a year after their parents died he’s still grieving too. So, you're catching him in a moment of a complete radical life shift. He had all this promise for the family, was probably going to go to college and play football and make it out of the east side of Tulsa. But everything is radically shifting and he's kind of crumbling under the pressure when you catch him in the story. He's not handling all of these responsibilities well, but he shouldn't be. He's a kid. He shouldn't be in this scenario.

When you see him, you have such sympathy. And for me, coming into the character, he's so relatable in so many ways where, at different points of your life, you're faced with new responsibility and learning, like, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to overcome this?" That's part of growing up—in every stage of life, there's some new element that you're like, "I've never dealt with this before. How am I going to figure this out on the fly and learn how to live with this?" I drew a lot of inspiration from my older brother, actually. I have an older brother who's four years older than me, and I think Darrel's about five or six years older than Pony in the story. There's this generational gap between them where Darrel's just on the next stage of life. There's a little bit of a separation between the two of them. My brother's older than I am by four years, so I watched him go through life and saw the new obstacles he was encountering because he's on the next stage as me, always. My brother has sort of a solemn quality to him that I kind of found in how I portray the character.

How familiar were you with the production before you joined the tour?

THE OUTSIDERS as a story, the book and the movie, I was aware of, but I didn't have my own experience with it. I didn't read it in school. I hadn't seen the movie until I first heard that the production was going to be going to La Jolla when I was around a junior or senior in college. I was trying to increase my awareness of projects that I might be appropriate for by the time I came out of school. But Jason Schmidt, who plays Soda in the Broadway production, was one of my dear friends in college. He was a year above me. And so I was very aware of THE OUTSIDERS, especially since his involvement. I saw it in one of the first preview and I saw it multiple times before I ever got an audition for it. When I saw the show, I saw Brent [Comer] as Darrel and I just thought the role of Darrel wasn’t within my wheelhouse. I wasn’t sure I would ever be considered for this, but I knew I could kill this material. So, by the time I finally got the audition for the tour, I was thrilled that I was going in for Darrel, but I wasn't totally sure that they would see me as that. And then through callbacks, I started to believe. I was like, "Oh no, no, no. I think I am Darrel and I think I can trust that."

Is there something in particular that you look forward to the most before you go out on stage each night? 

I just love the music in this show. For a musical, it bridges such a wonderful gap between non-musical, non-theatrical music being written by Jamestown Revival, who is a folk duo. There's something about the beautiful marriage of those genres that is so actor-friendly to sing. Their songs are, from an acting standpoint and from a vocal standpoint, so logical and flow right out of you. I'm always looking forward to just sing this material and hear this material, even the stuff that I'm not singing when I'm offstage. It's a thrill. I love doing "Runs in the Family (Reprise)" leading up to screaming my face off and slapping Ponyboy. Not because I love slapping him, but I think that song is liberating to sing because you spend so much of your time training to be a singer to sound pretty, but that song is just an outburst. So you have permission to be messy and yell and not be pretty all the time. And it's a new sense of liberation I'm finding as an actor and singer. That's a thrill to do every night.

We have a fabulous company. I'm learning from the others who have been on many projects before, this being my professional debut, I'm learning how rare of a group this really is and just trying to seep it in just because we're really having a wonderful time together. We have a blast doing this together every night.

What's the song that Darrel sings? The really emotional, reflective song?

"Throwing in the Towel." With Sodapop. I think that's my personal favorite song in theater for the last 15 years. That was the song that, when I got the call that I got this part, I called my mom and I was talking to her, you know, "Oh my gosh, Mom, I got the part..." and my mom was like, "You're going to sing 'Throwing in the Towel' every night." And that was the moment where I burst out crying, where I was just like, "Oh my gosh." That song is the most beautiful gift to theater. I just love doing that every night. Corbin, who plays Sodapop, my younger brother, who I sing that song with, I went to college with him as well, he was a freshman when I was a senior. So, we've had this big brother, little brother relationship for a while. We did our final callback and we did our chemistry read for the show together. That was this moment where we're like, "Oh my gosh, we're about to do this together." And then we got it. It's been a cool moment for us. Singing that song with him every night is such a special thing.

Speaking of young performers, I always like to ask folks like you, who are in some of their first professional productions and really getting out there, if you have any advice for other young performers who are looking to follow in those footsteps, who have aspirations to get into the world of theater.

Absolutely, yeah. I think the thing that I usually emphasize is that everybody's journey to be in this industry is different. You spend a long time where there's the people you look up to and you try to kind of follow in their footsteps, which is not a bad thing. But also give yourself grace when your pathway is different. No two ways into this industry are the same. Everybody has an individual experience. And because of that, you have to really be proactive about your own career, about how you get into audition rooms and why you're in an audition room, even if the project may seem like it's not right for you at all, how you can use that to get you further with that casting office or whatever it may be. Keep being an artist so that when you walk into the room, you're not showing an air of desperation, like, "Please give me a job so that I can be an artist again," but that you're creatively fulfilling yourself and that you're looked at as a collaborator when you walk in the room because you're a fulfilled artist. You're somebody who's contributing to your own career, even if someone's not giving you a job. Energy goes such a long way.

But yeah, just give yourself grace, know that your journey is your own, and be really proactive about what you want and keep going for it because it will happen. It'll happen because you've kept going and you've shown that persistence and you'll be seen for that.

Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think readers would like to know about yourself or about the show or what to expect?

I'm just excited for Atlanta. I'm excited for everybody to come down. It's been just a thrill. The audience reception across the country has been so wonderful and we've had the pleasure to meet so many people after the show. So I encourage people to come, come to stage door, say hello. We're excited to meet everybody and excited to share the story with Atlanta.

THE OUTSIDERS plays at the Fox Theatre Tuesday, November 25th through Sunday, November 30th as part of the 2025/2026 Regions Bank Broadway in Atlanta season. Tickets are available at the Fox Theatre box office at 660 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30308 and by visiting foxtheatre.org/theoutsiders or by calling (855)-285-8499. Group orders of 10 or more may be placed by contacting sales@foxtheatre.org. Performances are Tuesday, November 25th at 7:30 PM, Wednesday November 26th at 1:00 PM and 7:30 PM, Friday, November 28th at 8PM, Saturday, November 29th at 2PM and 8PM, and Sunday, November 30th at 1:00PM and 6:30PM.

Lead Photo: THE OUTSIDERS North American Tour Company. Photo by Matthew Murphy

Top Photo: Travis Roy Rogers

Mid Photo 1: THE OUTSIDERS North American Tour Company. Photo by Matthew Murphy

Mid Photo 2: (L-R) Nolan White and Travis Roy Rogers in THE OUTSIDERS North American Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy

Mid Photo 3: Nolan White and THE OUTSIDERS North American Tour Company. Photo by Matthew Murphy