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Given her background, Emma Hearn would probably be a Soc (pronounced sosh, as in socialite) in real life, just as she is on stage where she plays Cherry Valance, the female lead and one of the Socs in “The Outsiders: A New Musical” at the Academy of Music May 26 through June 7.
The rock musical is a coming-of-age story told through the eyes of members of two gangs or cliques (depending on your point of view). Some belong to the Greasers and others are part of the elite Socs.
“It’s a socio-economic divide,” Hearn said. “People identify with both sides. Fortunately and unfortunately, it’s still relevant today.”
Hearn, who lives in the Upper Dublin area, grew up in Lower Gwynedd. She attended Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, where high school tuition now skates close to $46,000 per year (although it wasn’t that much when she attended and many students receive financial aid.)
“I was definitely more of a Soc,” Hearn said. “That was the world I grew up in, with resources available to me.”
Later, she returned to Germantown Academy, teaching drama to middle-schoolers.
“It was so wonderful, so full circle. Former teachers became colleagues. I’ve got former students coming to see the show and former classmates — 100 people coming from my school. It’s going to be emotional for sure,” Hearn said.
“It’s probably for the best that I can’t see” the audience from the stage.
Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, “The Outsiders,” which won a Tony award for best musical, is the second theatrical adaptation of the novel by S.E. Hinton. Hearn thinks that the play rings true to what teenagers may experience because Hinton was a teenager herself, writing the book in high school in 1967.
“It’s a story by a teenager, for teenagers, with teenagers,” Hearn said.
“The cast is not far from it,” she said. “It’s a much younger cast than the average of most national tours. It feels really raw to see the story told with those bodies.”
In October 2025, the company launched “The Outsiders” tour in Tulsa where the cast met Hinton. “She empowered us to make it our own and not to feel the pressure to be a carbon copy of what was already made,” Hearn said.
In the play, the two sides rumble and violence ensues with tragedy on all sides. Some tensions come to a head over Cherry (the Soc), who later connects emotionally with Ponyboy, (a Greaser), who also serves as a narrator.
Even though Hearn hadn’t read Hinton’s book as a teenager, she can understand how it resonates across generations. In the play, there are nine principal characters, including an older brother who has to raise his younger siblings when their parents die.
“There are so many different people that people can see part of themselves in,” she said.
Besides that, “it’s an exciting night of theater,” with a fight sequence and many deep emotions.
In the end, she hopes the show will encourage audiences and cast alike to “have more compassion for each other, to understand that we don’t always know what someone’s going through.
“I think the story, aside from whether you are a musical theater fan or not, is a story that hits home for a lot of people,” she said.
Off stage, Hearn proves that the gap between the Greasers and the Socs can be overcome. She and Travis Roy Rogers, who plays Darrel, the older brother Greaser raising his younger siblings, are a real life item and drive from city to city with her little dog, Phoebe.
From Philadelphia, they’ll travel next to Grand Rapids, Michigan, then to Toronto, with tour dates extending to May 2027 in Fort Worth, Texas. While she’s here, she plans to visit favorite haunts near Germantown Academy, Zakes Café and Rich’s Deli for a hoagie.
“The Outsiders: A New Musical”, May 26-June 7, Ensemble Arts at the Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St., Phila., 215-893-1999.
