LAURA LAPHAM, Arts & Life Editor—Wolves in nature are viewed as strong, powerful creatures, and the performance of The Wolves is not different.
The Denison University Theater in the 89th season presented The Wolves written by Sarah DeLappe.
Denison’s performance of The Wolves has been student directed by Sophia Menconi ‘20 and Sarah Wilson ‘20.
The Wolves is a performance about a girls indoor soccer team. The performance takes place as the girls prepare for games over the season against other teams in the area.
The girls are a roudy bunch, but they all face difficult subjects in their lives: eating disorders, abortions, cancer and death.
The audience is introduced to many of these difficult subjects that the girls face in their lives through just the conversations that take place as they prepare for each game.
The way that the story is performed is widely dynamic.
Similar to large groups in real life there are sometimes multiple conversations going on at once, shouting, running around, and generally a lot of movement and talk.
The performers present a very dynamic scenario where the preformers are moving on and off stage, talking over each other, yelling at each other, or talking on the side, yet it is not difficult to follow the performance, and it creates a very interesting fluid setting.
Kathryn Hubbard ‘23, a Psychology and Education double major from Bel Air, Mayland, says, “it took a while to get used to doing lines while we stretch and change at the same time…. we had to change the way we approached rehearsal and made it almost like choreography for dance.”
The performance had a strong emphasis on physical movement as part of the story showing the interactions and life of the girls in the performance.
The performance was also very emotional and had a lot of power behind it, and makes for a powerful performance to watch as an audience member.
Now for the women themselves, preparing and performing The Wolves has been an experience in itself. Hubbard said, “it felt like a family, and it was really empowering to be a part of an all women cast. I think we all feel like we are doing something important because this show talks about so many important issues from the eyes of the teenage girls.”
Lucy Dobson ‘22, a history and theater major from Cincinnati Ohio, described the performance as ”amazing as well as exhausting.” These Women worked very hard to create such an amazing performance with a lot of dynamic working parts to tell a serious and even difficult story sometimes.
The Wolves is certainly an experience to remember for the audience and oe the prefromers.
There are performances on the nights of November 20th and 21st at 8 p.m in the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts – Hylbert Family Studio Theater.