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. Yet, the characters are deeply nuanced. If they appear to be teenaged archetypes at first—the less experienced, sheltered one (#2); the new girl (#46); the defiant, rebellious one (#7)—they reveal themselves to be far more complex throughout the action of the play.

The Stein quote at the beginning suggests the age of the girls shouldn’t be taken as a reason to dismiss their intricacies as characters and that fewer years and less life experience doesn’t equal less complexity. For example, the intense anxiety with which #00 vomits before every game, #25’s unwavering leadership as the captain, or #7’s earnest, outspoken rebelliousness aren’t minimized or made unimportant as teenage, female emotions often are. Each girl is discovering and determining who she is while still being a substantial person. When #14 dies suddenly, their feelings of loss and awkward grappling with propriety are ageless, even for the ones who have never had to grieve before.

In that sense, “We are all the same age on the inside” (8) because death of the self or a peer can come at any age. The girls are tough and strong, and as numbers, they are defined first as athletes and as part of the team. Within the slice-of-life presented in the play, on the limited space of the Astroturf, their connection to one another is significant and second nature. The audience must do the work of discerning the girls’ individual identities as they gradually reveal bits of themselves. DeLappe’s characters are alternately elusive and forthcoming. They are girls, all with different identities, who each undermine in their own ways traditional ideas of girlhood and femininity. Women of all ages can identify with these girls and their very real fierceness.