Sarah DeLappe’s award-winning play, “The Wolves,” ran Nov. 2-3 in Studio 60. Directed by junior musical theater major Madison Merkel, the play is about a high school girls’ soccer team. There are 10 roles — nine players, referred to primarily by their jersey numbers, and one “soccer mom,” who finds her way to the stage in the last minutes of the play.
Merkel came across the play her freshman year while in search of plays for women.
“I was actually looking for monologues, but there are no monologues in ‘The Wolves,’” she said. “But I immediately re-read the script,” she said.
The script relays with startling accuracy the dialogues of teenage girls, the overlapping dialogue, the inside jokes, the talks about both boys and politics and references to both School House Rock and Game of Thrones. The dialogue begs comparison to that of the TV show “Gilmore Girls,” but as a less whimsical version.
“I enjoyed watching a story about teenage girls and the conversations they have about the hard issues in life,” said audience member Emily Thorington.
The audience only witnesses snapshots of the girls’ lives — limited to the discussions around warm-ups of each game. However, there is plenty of drama to go around. The girls are fierce and forward and over-the-top, yet at the same time they are subtle, restrained, and fearful. The power of the play lies not only in all the things the girls say (which there is a lot), but also with what tragic things are left unsaid.
Playwright DeLappe referred to the teammates as “warriors” in an interview with Independent.
“At a certain point I thought I was writing a war movie. Instead of a bunch of 19-year-old men going to battle, it was a group of 16-year-old girls going to a soccer game. And that’s a different type of war,” she said.
[Photo courtesy of Clare Weigel]
