The stage of the auditorium became a soccer pitch for the fall play “The Wolves” by Sarah DeLappe. Action is centered around a girls soccer team, and nine girls and their conversations over stretching, but this play is about more than soccer and gossip.
Written in 2014, “The Wolves” was inspired by the exhibit in the New Museum in New York: Here and Elsewhere. While DeLappe was taking in the photos of suicide bombings and civil war in the Middle East and North Africa–according to an article by the Marin Theater Company–other viewers appeared glued to their phones. According to the same article DeLappe was greatly affected by the way people in America can react to events in the Middle East with so little sympathy or empathy, continuing about their days while they see what is happening to other people around the world.
This play was chosen after Director Cassie Slater saw it performed at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Salter said she chose it in part because it’s “such an ensemble kind of play where everybody kind of gets a chance to shine.”
The rehearsal process was immersive for the student actors. “We had a movement director who came in and did all the soccer drills and things like that. So we started with all of them learning how to move their bodies in soccer ways,” Slater said. She wanted the play to feel as real as possible, to make sure the students were connected with the themes in the play as closely as possible. Slater wanted the students to be able to experience things they might not normally experience but were important nonetheless. “I let them kind of figure out where they wanted to go, and then I would just finesse where they needed to be for the audience to be able to see everything. They had a lot of autonomy.”
Not only was the experience about student actors being able to have choice over how they portrayed people at their age going through difficult situations, but it was also about a larger social issues. .
“I think it’s about femininity and what it means to be othered,” senior Gabby Druger said. Druger played the captain in “The Wolves” said, “I think the play just really opened my eyes to how we should be treating the other women in our life. We shouldn’t be competing with them, we shouldn’t be trying to kick them out of our little groups. We should connect with everyone.” Druger feels the play’s message is one of the importance of showing respect and dignity to other people, even if they are seen as ‘other.’ The play itself was a showcase of Parker theater. “It was so much fun. I love theater. Parker theater here is amazing. I couldn’t wait to see what it [the play] was,” Upper School science teacher Elizabeth Druger said. Elizabeth Druger is Gabby Druger’s mother, and after the play was over she was “enjoying people coming up to me and saying what a great play it was, and how fabulous and amazing all of the students were, including Gabby.”
