The Wolves: A Play

On the first page of the text, the playwright quotes Gertrude Stein: “We are always the same age inside” (8). The Wolves is Sarah DeLappe’s first play. She wrote it quickly (the first draft was done in three weeks) while she was still in graduate school, and it was an immediate success, even becoming a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. DeLappe has been praised for her authentic portrayal of adolescent girls, reflected particularly in their natural, realistic dialogue, which overlaps and forgoes an exposition. The audience is invited into the team’s space, not as fellow team members, but to glean what they can as outsiders to the girls’ intense team bond and rich history. They are several steps behind #46, who is trying to fit in but doesn’t know their inside jokes or untouchable topics, often being singled out as strange. A teenaged soccer team that has been playing together for a decade, for example, would naturally share a lot that doesn’t need to be articulated, such as their names.

DeLappe creates a challenge for actors to construct characters that distinguish themselves from one another without the usual markers of names or individual fashion choices.