The Wolves
CAST
#11
Annelise Menna
#25
Veronica Pena Negrette
#13
Emily Pearson
#46
Julia Hanna
#2
Amanda King
#7
Sarah Gordon
#8
Kim Clifton
#00
Molly Holohan
#14 / SOCCER MUM*
Tyallah Bullock
Chelsea Hawke
*NOTE: Chelsea Hawke will be playing #14 and Tyallah Bullock will be playing Soccer Mum for the following performances; Tue 18, Wed 19 (evening), Fri 21 and Sat 22 (matinee) Oct. For all other performances, Tyallah Bullock will be playing #14 and Chelsea Hawke will be playing Soccer Mum.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Director
Yoni Prior
Assistant Director
Lincoln Gidney
Marni Mount
Set Designer
Abbey Stanway**
Costume Designer
Rubi Dinardo**
Lighting Designer
Océane Federow-Yemm**
Sound Designer
Ethan Hunter**
Associate Set Designer
Ingrid Muller
Stage Manager
Isabella Stephens**
Assistant Stage Manager
Liz Bird
Head of Staging
Isabella Edwards**
Workshop Assistants
Chloe Goldsmith
Ranko Hong
Bradley Hora
Brooke Painter
Xander Reichard
Taylor Amakia Tiauli
Senior Costumier
Wendy Borg**
Costume Manager
Hannah Jukes Frere
Head Electrician
Heath Roberts
Deputy Head Electrician / Lighting Programmer and Operator
Sara Bayley
**Third year Bachelor of Fine Arts (Design and Production) student
PROFESSIONAL STAFF
Production Coordinator
David Harrod
Stagecraft Project Coordinator
Alan Logan
Construction Consultant
James Clarke
Scenic Art Department
Morgan Jones
Costume Supervisor
Karen Blinco
ACADEMIC STAFF
Soccer/Exercise Coach
Colin Sneesby
Voice/Dialect Coach
Amy Hume
Production Academic Mentors
Nathan Burmeister, Jenny Hector, Kelly Ryall
VCA Production Academic Staff
Anna Cordingley, Martyn Coutts, Jo Evans, Amanda Hitten, Lisa Mibus, Lisa Osborn, Matt Scott
VCA Theatre Undergraduate Academic Staff
Dr Chris Mead, Dr Sarah Austin, Georgina Naidu, Amy Hume, Colin Sneesby, Steph Kehoe, Isabella Vadiveloo
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The Wolves premiered in September 2016, two months before the election of Donald Trump.
Middle America’s choice of president.
Read against the rampant exceptionalism of the Trump years however, the politics of The Wolves are subtle. There are only oblique references to national politics, no mention of the looming climate crisis and the school curriculum seems to focus on historical crises of other nations far away.
Nine young women, each known only by their player number, prepare to play soccer in a sports dome somewhere in Middle America. They stretch, run and do drills. And they talk… conversations that swoop, split and overlap between the private and the public. This insulated bubble, annexed to the sports field, is a space where everyone can speak their truth, though some choose not to. There is love, loyalty and intimacy. There are moments of betrayal and exquisite cruelty. At the end of their high school years, these young women anticipate the scrutiny of scouts from colleges who will determine their future success. At the edge of womanhood, they negotiate menstruation, consent, body image, mental health and loss. The differences that might divide them in the world beyond the airdome are dissolved by the demands and ethos of the team.
As Jessica Arthur, who directed the play for Belvoir Street Theatre in 2019, observes, “it is rare to find a play in the theatrical canon written just for women” – particularly young women. The actors in Company 2022 have mined the ensemble ethos forged over 3 particularly tough years, to develop complex, multi-layered characters and relationships in response to a complex and challenging work of theatre. Like the characters they play they are beautiful, brave, curious, skilled and resilient.
– Yoni Prior
WRITER'S NOTE
I wrote this play in a sports bra. I am not an athlete in my current life and hadn’t worn one since high school. I would take off my shirt, take off my bra, pull the sports bra over my chest, and sit down to write. I overshare not to advocate for method writing (although…) but to suggest just what sort of play this play was from the start. Physical. Concerned with the body, with women’s bodies, not as eye candy or symbolic vessels but as muscular, dexterous, capable, contradictory, and fallible individuals.
Welcome to a planet of teenage girls.
The biographical fallacy hounds writers, particularly writers who happen to identify as female. Many assume that she must be writing from her own life or how else did she think of the darn thing? I did not play soccer in high school. I was a teenage girl, I knew other teenage girls, I still do. These characters are not downloaded from my yearbook. This play is not really about soccer.
So why soccer?
AstroTurf and American exceptionalism. It’s essential that these girls are playing indoor soccer, deep in the suburbs, in a massive structure engineered to allow them to pursue this leisure activity in short sleeves in the dead of winter. The world’s sport has been siloed to an Air Dome in a suburb. Their team is undefeated. These American teenagers exist, quite literally, in a bubble. At that particular age when the stakes of everyday life could not be higher, they are desperate to understand themselves and the world around them, but they can only see so far.
I thought of the play like a war movie. Instead of a troop of young men preparing for battle, we watch a team of young women warming up for their soccer game. There’s a captain, a rebel, an innocent, a recent recruit, a common enemy. The arc follows an escalation of blood and viscera both in the content of their speech and the actual sustained injuries and traumas. Of course, their battlefield is a carpet of artificial grass.
And, yet, on their artificial grass, these girls are allowed to define themselves amongst themselves. Their bodies are their own and they are strong. We do not meet them as the property or accessory of a man – a boyfriend, a father, an institutional custodian in school or in government – we meet them with each other. We’re on their turf. They’re not on ours.
- Sarah DeLappe, Writer (Belvoir St Theatre, 2019)