‘THE WOLVES’
ECU play shows how young women navigate adolescence while playing on soccer team
Alyssa Davis plays No. 7 during a dress rehearsal.
(Photo by Cliff Hollis)
TICKETS
Sept. 25-27, 30; Oct. 1-4 – 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 28-29 – 2 p.m.
$15 Public | $10 Students
East Carolina University students will perform “The Wolves,” a story about young women navigating adolescence and soccer, Sept. 25 through Oct. 4 in the Archie Burnette Studio Theatre on campus.
“The Wolves,” created by American playwright Sarah DeLappe in 2016, was nominated as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. The play focuses on young female soccer players and their lives when they aren’t on the field.
Jen-Scott Mobley, ECU assistant professor and director for the production, says the play was selected last year and auditions took place in the spring.
“Our actors spent the summer learning their roles and lines,” Mobley said. “It’s a very challenging play because there is a lot of overlapping dialogue because it’s the way young people talk, it isn’t Shakespeare.”
Mobley says the play has 30 students; 10 who are actors and 20 who are in support roles such as production and stage managers. This month, the actors attended an ECU soccer practice to have a better understanding of the roles they are playing.
“Our actors wanted to meet the soccer team and watch them play to understand what a soccer player’s world is like when they are out of practice. These are things like how they talk to each other and what kind of stretches they do,” Mobley said. “We are trying to act like we are athletes.”
Actors Alyssa Davis, who plays No. 7, and Kelsey Kornegay, who portrays No. 14, are assuming roles of 17-year olds. The play will show how the game of soccer brings the young women closer together.
“There’s the literal soccer game and then the non-literal soccer game, that shows the banter and the relationships of young women at that age,” Kornegay said.
The student actors observe the ECU women’s soccer team during practice. (Photo by Rhett Butler)
“All of the characters come from different backgrounds and beliefs, but the game is what brings them all together and they’re a team no matter what,” Davis said.
Both actors said almost an hour during rehearsal is dedicated to learning and practicing different soccer skills but that all the students in the play have grown to have a love and respect for soccer.
Kyndall Nobles, the student costume designer, said that the process was different compared to other productions and has been a learning experience.
“We’ve never had a mainstage production in that small black box theater, so I have to make the shoes on the players look like they’ve been worn and make the uniforms look like actual soccer uniforms,” Nobles said.
Performances will be in the studio theatre on the ground floor of Messick Theatre Arts Center, which will create an intimate setting for the audience. The theatre has limited seating, which is why the play will be performed 11 times so that everyone will have a chance to attend, Mobley said.
Davis, Kornegay and Nobles said they hope that what the audience takes away from the play is the power of a team and what the players have to overcome and walk through.
“I want the audience to see that this play isn’t about soccer but about adolescence and navigating through that as a teenage girl,” Nobles said.
Damaris Tooley plays No. 11, Amber, during a dress rehearsal.
(Photo by Cliff Hollis)