LOS ANGELES — Fifty-nine years ago, a 16-year-old girl named Susie Hinton wrote a novel — about regular kids in Tulsa, Okla., divided by class — that countless other teenagers would go on to read in their own high school classrooms. In 1983, Francis Ford Coppola adapted that book into a film. In 2023, a musical adaptation premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, then transferred to Broadway and won the Tony Award for best musical a year later.

“The Outsiders” opened Wednesday in Los Angeles at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, all bright lights and big feelings. Earlier that evening, at the Aster Hotel around the corner, Angelina Jolie and Octavia Spencer co-hosted a fundraiser event with the show’s educational initiative known as the Stay Gold Project, and City Year to increase young people’s access to live theater. (Stay Gold has reached over 8,600 students and educators in more than 100 schools.)

Jolie is one of the producers of the musical. She signed on after her daughter Vivienne, who was 14 at the time, first brought her to see it at the La Jolla Playhouse. “I was watching it, and I was remembering my experience with this story and what it meant to me,” Jolie said, beginning to choke up. “But I was watching her, and I was learning about her, and realizing what she was seeing when she saw it, and what was moving her, and I was discovering my daughter.”

Spencer — who sat beside Jolie on a plaid couch by the stage before the event — is a City Year board member. She has participated in its mentorship program for years and advocated for education throughout her career.

“My job as an actor is to listen,” Spencer said. “And I realize it applies to everything in life. Most specifically, with the work that we do with City Year, in listening and watching our AmeriCorps members and how they work with the students. I think it’s important that we don’t assume we know what the students need; we ask and we listen.”

City Year — the national education and youth partner of the Stay Gold Project — works with AmeriCorps members. They serve as tutors and mentors to students in under-resourced schools, providing support (both academic and interpersonal) and after-school programming.

“I didn’t have this program; I would have loved it,” Jolie said. Instead, she “had people making me feel like I wasn’t smart, because I was a bit wild or I was a bit difficult. So maybe I was one of those kids. I couldn’t have been the intelligent one. I couldn’t have been the one that could organize or direct. Maybe I’ll be the crazy artist over there, or the wild one.”

Jolie did, however, have her mother, Marcheline Bertrand. Bertrand, also an actor (she studied with Lee Strasberg), loved theater. She would take Jolie to the theater and talk to her about it — not unlike Jolie’s relationship with Vivienne. Spencer, on the other hand, spoke about educators who helped her recognize her own voice: her first grade teacher (“got to get them in the formative years!”); her seventh grade teacher, Miss Holly; and her high school guidance counselor.

The AmeriCorps members who work with City Year help fill mentorship roles, too. “I was 23, right out of college,” said Emily Baeza, a City Year alum who now works in the film industry. “I thought the mentorship came with a lot of nobility. … And I quickly learned that nobility doesn’t have a lot to do with it. It’s showing up. It’s that consistency. It’s waking up every day, 5:30 a.m., showing up in our yellow jackets.”

Those yellow jackets flitted around the room like bees before the event, mingling with fundraiser attendees and big-name actors, explaining what, exactly, City Year does. Baeza, for her part, served for two years at a high school in Boyle Heights. Now, whenever she passes the Sixth Street Bridge, she thinks about early morning burrito stand runs, and greeting students coming to school.

She still thinks about one of her students, Ruben, who reached back out when he graduated from high school. At 14, he was told — like Jolie, and the greasers in “The Outsiders” — that he didn’t have what it takes, that he was a bad kid. “Stories shape our reality,” Baez said. “Those stories we tell ourselves about the things that happen to us and the things that we experience really inform how we see the world, and the same goes for our students.”

Later that evening — past the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and inside the Art Deco Pantages Theater — 35 City Year students, ages 12 to 14, all from Pio Pico Middle School, got to see “The Outsiders,” too. They sat sprinkled among members of the press, season ticket holders, and stars like Topher Grace, Ashley Park and Daniel Dae Kim.

“It looked like somebody died. I just thought that was crazy!” said Boima Clarke, 13. (He was referring to the death of the “Soc” character, Bob, with flashing strobes and echoing sound effects.) “I was thinking of how they even do these plays and the dedication.”

This was Clarke’s first play ever, and he’d like to see another one, as would his friend, Aleyda Hernandez, 12. (Her first live arts performance was “The Nutcracker,” which she saw last year with a different middle school.) Clarke would give “The Outsiders” four-and-a-half stars. Hernandez would give it four.

“Long after every building collapses, or when Mother Nature reclaims this planet, the things that will linger … it will be the stories that we tell each other,” Spencer said. “And that’s what we need to continue to foster. That’s why storytelling is important, and it also gives you ownership of your story. Never give someone else the pen and allow them to write your story.”

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