THE WOLVES SCORES WITH AUTHENTIC EXAMINATION OF THE POWER OF GIRLS
One of the most talked about plays of the 2016/2017 New York theatre scene was Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, a look at the lives of nine players on a girls’ indoor soccer team. It won the 2017 off-Broadway Obie Award for ensemble work and was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
It popped up on Verb Theatre’s artistic director Jamie Dunsdon’s radar about 18 months ago.
“I had heard so much about the play. It was being called the hot new play to look out for. Just a few pages into reading the script I knew it was something I wanted to see but, more importantly, something I wanted to direct,” says Dunsdon, explaining “it’s a play about girl power that really captures the authenticity of these young women.”
Dunsdon, who is also the artistic producer of Calgary Young People’s Theatre, says she knows when playwrights get the youth dialogue wrong.
“I’m familiar with the way young people and teenagers talk and Sarah DeLappe’s dialogue in The Wolves felt ripped from the conversations I was hearing at Calgary Young People’s. Even more importantly, is the authenticity of who these young women are and what their concerns and opinions are.”
Dunsdon says she ended up reading The Wolves two months after Donald Trump became president.
“That was a tough time for women, and suddenly I was reading a play that showed how strong and resilient young women are. It definitely is a play that speaks to our times.”
The play unfolds over six weeks as a series of warm-up sessions for each of the games the girls will be playing.
“I don’t play soccer and never did. I am so not athletically inclined. Instead of hiring a dialect coach or fight coach as we often do, this time we hired Michael Petersen, a soccer coach. A few of the girls play soccer so we leaned on them as well.
“Because we never actually see a game, Michael taught the girls how to kick properly. He taught them how to warm up, and he taught them drills and exercises.”
Dunsdon explains the exercises the girls perform “become important metaphors for the themes in the play.
“We have nine soccer players, which means we will have nine different journeys and nine different storylines. The beauty of the play is it gives the audience a nuanced understanding of how female relationships are forged at a young age.”
By setting the play as a series of soccer warm-ups, DeLappe removed the possibility for clichéd dialogue and clichéd characters. Because the girls all wear the same uniforms and have their hair pulled back, they end up talking about things that are more crucial to them than clothes, hair and boys.
“I also like that DeLappe doesn’t name any of the girls. They are referred to by the numbers on their uniforms.”
Anna Cummer plays the only adult in the play, a soccer mom who comes in very near the end and has a single monologue.
“This is the opposite of what happens in most plays involving young actors. They are seldom the focus of the play, but now we have a play about young women told, in our case, by actors who are the approximate ages of these characters.
“This makes the play all the richer.”
The girls on the team are played by Rachel Mah, Haley Mowatt, Nadia Kolensnikova, Thea Libin, Tess Larson, Mya Welsh, Dana Prather, Sarah Shepherd and Vicky Pablo.