Portland State University Theater presents Pulitzer Prize finalist “The Wolves,” a one-act play written by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah DeLappe, May 24 through June 1, 2024 (preview May 23).
Sarah DeLappe’s debut play, “The Wolves,” is a dark coming-of-age story that explores the shifting and complicated dynamics of a girls’ indoor soccer team during a winter playing season. The play is set against the deceptively simple backdrop of bright green AstroTurf, centering the audience’s attention squarely on the young athletes as they grapple with the challenges of growing up–all presented with a galvanizing mix of humor, friendship, fierce competition, and questions of belonging and identity.
“I wanted to see a portrait of teenage girls as human beings -- as complicated, nuanced, very idiosyncratic people who weren’t just girlfriends or sex objects or manic pixie dream girls but who were athletes and daughters and students and scholars and people who were trying actively to figure out who they were in this changing world around them,” wrote DeLappe.
Sarah DeLappe first delved into playwriting during her junior year at the Yale School of Drama, thanks to a class she took with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel. DeLappe began writing her critically acclaimed debut play, “The Wolves,” in 2014, and it premiered in 2016 in a production by The Playwright’s Realm at The Duke on 42nd Street and was named a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play has also won the Marin Theatre Company’s Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award, and the Obie Ensemble Award. It is a 2017 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Yale Prize, and has received nominations for the Lucille Lortel Award (Best Director and Best Play), Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award (Best American Play), and Outer Critics Circle Award (Outstanding Director of a Play).
After the success of “The Wolves,” DeLappe directed her attention towards screenwriting. She wrote the screenplay for the 2022 film, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, an A24 satirical slasher film exploring the social dynamics of Gen Z and their relationship to their phones. DeLappe also worked as one of the writers on the new HBO mini TV series, The Regime, a satirical political parody starring Kate Winslet, which began airing March 3, 2024. Her latest project is a screenplay adaptation of Dorothy Baker’s 1962 novel, Cassandra at the Wedding, a dark comedy centering around marriage. DeLappe will be adapting the novel for the screen as well as working as the executive producer for the film.
“The scary, exhilarating brightness of raw adolescence emanates from every scene of this uncannily assured first play by Sarah DeLappe,” wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times upon its premiere in 2016.
“The Wolves is a delightful meditation on society, sex, and soccer... DeLappe's dialogue is hilarious and idiosyncratic, moving swiftly from gross-out humor to pain... She offers us ninety minutes in a smart, sympathetic, female world. It's a patch of Astroturf I would gladly set foot on again,” wrote the Village Voice.
Leading PSU Theater’s production of “The Wolves” is director Christine Freije, whose recent directing credits include the EP release performance of “Candy in the House of a Thousand Hearts” (Cafe Mustache, Chicago), “The Tempest” (Portland Playhouse’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare), “Antigone” (Redtwist Theater), “Vinegar Tom, Everybody” (The Theater School at DePaul University), and “Tartuffe” (The Theater School at DePaul University). Her original devised work includes “Shrew” (Reject Theater Project) and “dream-rushes: a wonderland trip” (Theater Contra). Freije has worked at the Arden Theater Company, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, Philadelphia Artists Collective, and Theater Horizon. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the Theater School at DePaul University.
The creative team includes Abby Fox (dramaturg), Keanan Stone (dramaturg), Solomon Weisbard (scenic and lighting designer), Rachel Errico (co-lighting designer/soccer consultant), Paige Hanna (costume designer), Laura Helgeson (assistant costume designer), Rebecca Ralston (sound designer), Frankie Almutawa (assistant director), Jill Catanzaro (soccer consultant), and Hanna Rizo (sound engineer/assistant sound designer).
About Portland State Theater
The PSU Theater program mounts three productions every year on the stages of two unique theaters in Lincoln Hall. Directed by world-class faculty, these shows provide hands-on experience for students of every focus within the program, from acting to dramaturgy to technical theater. In the selection of dramatic and other works, the school seeks to reflect vital contemporary issues, personal and public, in varied and challenging forms, both new and classic, thereby creating a forum for cultural and social concerns. The program actively pursues the development of new works, collaborations with urban arts and educational institutions, and the expansion of cultural exchange.
If You Go
"The Wolves" by Sarah DeLappe
Runs May 23 through June 1, 2024 (opening night May 24)
Lincoln Hall Boiler Room Theater, 1620 SW Park Avenue, Portland
Tickets ($6 - $15, free with PSU ID) at pdx.edu/boxoffice or calling (503) 725-3305
More information: https://www.pdx.edu/music-theater/wolves