Last night I savored the University of Iowa production of The Wolves. The 2016 debut play by Sarah DeLappe features the pregame warm-ups of an indoor girls soccer team. The cast list identifies each of the nine high school juniors only by her jersey number, yet each girl possesses a distinct voice and story.
I braved the waning polar vortex to see the play because I love women’s sports, and because I know and admire so many young female athletes, including my three nieces. I’m privileged to be the academic mentor for Mount Mercy University’s volleyball team, and over the years, I’ve been lucky to teach many fine student athletes.
Right now I’m on sabbatical, drafting a novel about a high school girls basketball team, so I wanted to see how a playwright handled a high school girls team.
The performance offered ample inspiration for my novel, and it resonated with the overarching themes of this blog: being “midway” and grappling with mixed feelings.
High school juniors are, of course, at a significant midway point in their lives, hovering between childhood and adulthood, soon to leave home for college. The emotions of DeLappe’s teenagers also seem to hover. Especially when it comes to their sport.
Playing on the team brings both fear and joy, insecurity and empowerment.
The goalie vomits before the start of every match. Each player sometimes feels like an outsider. And nearly all of them worry because the guys’ team gets the better coach. (Their own coach, who never actually appears on stage—no men do—is always hungover). The girls’ biggest team-related fear is that they aren’t good enough—they won’t be recruited for college soccer.
Yet in the midst of these fears, and despite their bickering and gossip, it’s clear that the Wolves are a pack and that playing together feeds each girl’s confidence and spirit.
As they stretch and complete their passing drills, the girls touch on a W-I-D-E range of topics. Many you’d expect from teenage athletes—eating disorders, injuries, and parental pressure. Others you’d expect from young girls in general: step-parents, homework, service projects, sex, the “bummer” of self-reflection. And darker topics: racism, abortion, suicide. But the girls also banter about ghosts, immigrant children, and Cambodian genocide.
Most disturbing—and sadly realistic—about all their talk is its speed. No topic is delved into, and many are not even explicitly named. The girls’ conversations resemble the quick touches of the spider web drill they perform. Their most meaningful exchanges are intense, oblique, and fleeting.
They name the goalie’s SAD (social anxiety disorder) only when she is not present. When the newest player mentions another’s pregnancy, the captain shuts her down: “We don’t talk about those things.” A team mantra.
Later, after a horrible tragedy befalls one of the players, most of the girls can say only that it—the event? their feelings?—is “weird.” They allude to the tragedy many times before comically displacing their pain onto a hyper-detailed analysis of a teammate’s pimple.
When “Soccer Mom” takes the stage, you understand that the girls fail to talk directly about what matters not just because they are teenagers, but also because they may have no effective models—coaches, if you will—for honest communication.
Soccer Mom, the only adult character who appears on stage, enters in the final scene. She isn’t on stage long, but her monologue packs a huge emotional and thematic punch, and Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers (the only non-student actor) performed it masterfully.
Soccer Mom is clearly wracked with grief over the tragedy, but she cannot bring herself to name it. She manages to move beyond platitudes and euphemism only when she attempts to joke about a jar. In the jar, she once placed some sort of penalty note every time her daughter overused the word ‘like’ or ended a statement with the raised voice of a question. She wanted, ironically, to stress the importance of women speaking directly and powerfully.
The play itself—and this production—wholeheartedly celebrate young women’s voices. The assistant director and dramaturg, Morgan Grambo, interviewed the actors about their experience performing in Wolves, and the actors beautifully articulated what their characters often can’t.
Clearly, this brilliant ensemble cast saw themselves and their issues in DeLappe’s script.
Madeline Ascherl (#25) said,
What I’m most excited about is giving myself the opportunity to experience a different ending to my teenage story. I never came out in high school. I lived in fear of being harassed—or worse—because of who I truly am.…The Wolves provided me an opportunity to reconnect with that part of my life, find the strength within it, and allow my truth to be celebrated.
Leela Bassuk (#14) said,
#8 makes an inaccurate assumption about #14’s ethnic background. As a mixed-race person myself, I immediately connected with #14’s well-meaning, yet frustratingly ignorant questions. We see #14 recognize that her identity is yet again being publicly questioned and scrutinized, and the eventual correction she provides for #8 reveals a blend of emotions, ranging from irritation to pride, that I often experience myself in those frequent moments when I am asked to justify or explain my identity, heritage or ethnicity.
A blend of emotions: Sarah DeLappe’s play depicts the blend in all its messy glory.
Mary,
I was sorry I could not attend Saturday….sounds like it was rich, albeit troubling in a meaningful way. Thanks for filling me in. I love following your blog! Maybe I will become more of a social media user incrementally.
Carol