A show originally scheduled for Winter 2022 makes it to the stage.
After over a year-long delay, The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe finally opened in Studio Theatre on May 10th.
At the beginning of Rep Term XIX, the directors and students realized it would be necessary to perform with masks. The Wolves is a show with overlapping, quick dialogue. Due to concerns about audibility, director Jeff Grace made the decision to replace it with Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth.
While students enjoyed working on Dear Elizabeth, many of them were disappointed to lose the chance to work on The Wolves. It is based in realism with themes of youth, ambition, and self-discovery.
When the Knox Theatre department sat down to discuss the 2022 to 2023 season, The Wolves came up again.
“I had kind of lost the umph for it. I think maybe we passed it’s time, maybe there’s something else that’s more current that I could do, and so I didn’t commit to it right away,” Grace said. “And then, to be honest, Allison Smith, in the costume shop said, they’re talking about it, the girls are talking about it, they want to do it. And so I said, all right, well, we’ll do what they want to do. We’ll just do The Wolves, and so we did The Wolves.”
While some Rep Term XIX students have graduated, remaining students could finally work on the show they had heard about for months. Seniors Amelia Walz and Lily Zofkie, Rep Term XIX alums, both auditioned for The Wolves and were cast.
“We were just talking about this the other day, like how crazy it is that it’s been over a year, and we’re about to open, and how excited we were to be in the show” Walz said.
Now that The Wolves is no longer a Rep Term production, it gave younger students the chance to work on the show. One of those students is freshman Kyra Kellogg. While she has worked on a number of student shows, this is her first faculty production, and her largest acting role at Knox.
“I think it being about young women is so cool. Like that’s just not something that we see a lot. And it’s focused on just them. It’s like we’re talking about other things, but it all comes back to that group of women and like what they’re going through and it’s like, every character is like, there’s not a main character in the play. Like they’re just all kind of like this unit, like they’re together. And I think that’s really powerful,” Kellogg said.
“This coming-of-age play follows the lives of nine girls on an indoor soccer team as they warm-up for a series of weekly matches,” says the Knox Theatre website. The show goes deeper than one might expect from a play about soccer.
Sophomore Mei Zuch, another actor in the production, drew from her personal experience in the rehearsal room.
“I just think that anyone who sees it will intensely be affected by it,” Zuch said. “It’s so relevant. It’s like the issues that the girls are talking about are so relevant and then the issues that affect them are so relevant and also not talked about.”
Grace agrees: “It brings up so many things, it brings up ideas of selective listening. It brings up ideas of empathy. What does it mean to be a part of a team? Especially because the play takes this group of girls whose relationship starts out strong and then it deteriorates, and then a tragedy happens that brings them back together.”
The Wolves had four performances from May 10th to May 13th. They performed in Studio Theatre, in the basement of CFA. The show was free for the Knox Community and all students.
“All of the characters in the show, I love them. Even when they’re annoying. I still love them. Because they’re babies. And they’re growing up. And they’re playing soccer with their friends,” said Zuch.
