Interview: THE OUTSIDERS' Travis Roy Rogers on Coming Home to the Pantages With His Broadway Tour Debut

For Burbank native Travis Roy Rogers, coming home to Los Angeles with the national tour of The Outsiders is a full-circle moment. Rogers plays Darrel Curtis, the oldest of three brothers struggling to keep his family together, in what marks his professional acting debut. 

Now a year into the tour, he's returning to the very theater where he first fell in love with musical theater: the Hollywood Pantages. The show runs in Hollywood through October 18 before heading to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts October 20 through November 1.

Based on S.E. Hinton's beloved novel and the 1983 film, The Outsiders opened on Broadway in April 2024 and went on to win four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Its first national tour launched in September 2025, bringing the story of friendship, family and class divisions in 1960s Oklahoma to audiences across the country.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Rogers about returning to his hometown, finding unexpected layers in his character, and the show's spectacular rain-soaked rumble.

How does it feel to come back with this Broadway tour?

It's surreal. It's amazing. The Pantages is where I saw my first-ever professional productions of theater and where I really fell in love with the art form. [It’s what] pushed me to pursue this. It's super, super surreal bringing a show that I'm so proud of and a role that I'm so proud to play back to the Pantages and kind of fulfill this childhood dream of mine to be up there on the stage.

I'm just hoping I can bring the same inspiration to some of the young people in the crowd that I got from seeing it. 

Do you remember what the first show you saw at the Pantages was?

Yeah, it was Newsies, which is funny because The Outsiders is often compared to Newsies. A lot of young boys. But yeah, that was a very special production.

Have you stayed connected with your high school theater program? And now that you're performing this here in LA, have you had any opportunities to inspire those young actors the way you were inspired growing up?

Yeah. Actually, my community theater group that I grew up doing, a big group of them are going to come this upcoming Tuesday.

On Monday, on my off day, I'm going to go up to their company to do a little master class with them. So I'll do a little preview master class, work with them, and then they'll come the next day, which will be a lot of fun.

What theater group is that?

It’s called Escape Theatre. They're in Santa Clarita Valley, which is a little further up. We moved up there for my high school years.

For someone who's never read The Outsiders or seen the movie, how would you describe the show?

I think this show has something for everybody, and it is a universally relatable depiction of life. It really boils down to family—which everybody has—either your given family or your chosen family. And that's what this is all about.

It follows the Curtis brothers, of which I play Darrel Curtis. . . . There's a moment of reckoning where you have to choose your given family. And I think that's an important theme to tell.

Also, I think it's really easy to move through life with the people you're surrounded by and not give it a second thought at times. But I think everybody relates to that moment where you see those people that you've been with your whole life, and you choose to support them, and you choose to love them that extra bit.

I’ve heard this Broadway tour is your professional debut. That's incredible! What did it feel like when you learned that your first big job was going to be a Broadway tour?

It was surreal. I had been auditioning for some time since I graduated college.

When was that?

I graduated in 2024 and then moved to New York and did about a year-plus before getting this job. I had seen the production in previews on Broadway because one of my dear friends from college was playing Sodapop, Jason Schmidt, in the original cast.

So I had been following the show because of him. And when I saw the show the first time, I was obviously so impressed with him, but also walked away from the show being so enthralled by Darrel, the character. And I was just like, ‘Man, I would love to get a shot at this somehow, some way.’

So the fact that this is how it came to be, and the job that I get to debut professionally, I feel spoiled by it.

Is there anything that has surprised you since you've taken on the role?   

I think on the surface, although I really wanted to play the role, I didn't feel like I was really anything like Darrel. I'm the youngest in my family. I tend to be kind of a spark plug of energy and the goofball. But I think Darrel . . .  He's a victim of the circumstances. He's a 20-year-old kid who is just under an extreme amount of pressure to all of a sudden provide and parent his younger brothers.

So it's easy to perceive him as all serious, no fun, get the job done, things are hard, which they are, and all those things are true—but I think the thing that I found in Darrel, and especially doing it for over a year now, is that the kid still exists in him. 

I think that's part of the heartbreak of the circumstances. You get these flashes and glimpses of the kid that is Darrel, and he's having to kind of suppress that part of himself, or at least he feels like he has to suppress that part of himself, to provide and to overcome their circumstances.

The story is about a tight-knit group of young men who become sort of a makeshift family. Do you feel like the cast has developed that kind of brotherhood offstage as well?

Totally. We're genuinely great friends, and that has been a huge blessing.

Honestly, it’s such a relief compared to how we were all probably feeling coming into the tour. Touring is a unique lifestyle, and the people you work with are everybody . . . so I think all of us were really hoping that there'd be people we get along with, and throughout the first year of tour, we've just been so, so relieved and surprised that we're all such great friends. 

Additionally, my brothers in the show feel so much like my brothers in life that it really shocks me sometimes.

Corbin, who plays Sodapop—we actually overlapped for a year in college. So we had a relationship a little bit before the production started.

At our final callback for the audition for the show, we got to do chemistry reads together, and that was a moment that was really cool for us. It was kind of a full-circle moment going back to college. That big brother, brotherly dynamic was already living in there between us. So that has been a nice comfort. We've been friends since the start of this production.

With such a large cast of actors all around the same age, it sounds like it could be really fun backstage. Is there a lot of joking around?

Certainly. There are nights where we are very, very rambunctious and our stage managers have to kind of nail us down. But these people are as equally professional as they are fun. So it's a great group, and we love each other.

I haven't seen the show yet, but I heard there's an actual rainstorm. What's that like? 

The rumble scene is what it's called. It's a showstopper for a reason: It is a masterpiece of design and collaboration for all of our creatives, starting with Jeff and Rick Kuperman. . . . They're a pair of brothers who grew up in the mixed martial arts world as well as the dance world. And they are the unique blend of choreographers who can bring all of the lively, personalized dance of the show into this insane fight choreography that is so multilayered and complex and just thrilling to watch.

On top of that, we have Tony Award-winning sound, Tony Award-winning lighting, and the tech element in collaboration with the movement onstage—it is really, like, you cannot see where one department starts and the other ends. It is really a visual spectacle.

We have a texture on the stage that simulates gravel. Our whole stage is somewhat perforated so that when the water comes, it all falls through the stage and it gets put into a trough underneath, and then that water gets recycled and cleaned. It is a 3D experience, to say the least. Not that the theater already isn't an experience, I guess. But this show, even for non-theater people, it is so much of a spectacle that there's nobody in that audience who doesn't walk away with a ‘Wow.’

The rumble is a showstopper for a reason. And we all love doing it every night. Getting wet is crazy, but it's also a fun thing to wake you up every night. It's a good time.

Because you’re an LA local, give us some SoCal shoutouts! Are there people you grew up with around here, local theaters you love, or anyone you want to tell us about who influenced you in becoming an actor?

I mentioned Escape Theatre that I grew up with. I'm also going to mention my high school theater director, Stephen Whelan. He has recently retired, but he laid the groundwork for all of the education that built me up to the actor I am today. And my choreographer, Nancy Alterman, who was from my high school as well.

They both were instrumental in inspiring me to do what I do. 

Do you have a favorite local theater other than the Pantages? A smaller theater where you liked to see shows growing up, or where you go in your free time?

There are Wonderful Productions at  the Garry Marshall Theatre and the Colony Theatre. And then, of course, other giant productions come to the Ahmanson Theatre. And I saw many productions there as a young person.

The Outsiders plays at the Hollywood Pantages through October 18 and at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa from October 20 through November 1. Tickets are available via tour.outsidersmusical.com.