Sarah DeLappe’s play The Wolves is basically a masterclass in how to capture a very specific, very loud kind of chaos. If you’ve ever been a teenage girl—or lived within a ten-mile radius of one—you know that the energy isn't just "drama." It's visceral. It’s a mix of hormones, hyper-intellectualism, and the crushing anxiety of trying to fit into a world that hasn't quite decided what it wants from you yet.
The play isn't your typical "coming of age" story. It doesn't have a singular, tidy protagonist. Instead, we get a pack. Nine girls. An indoor soccer field. A lot of orange slices.
When it premiered Off-Broadway at The Playwrights Realm in 2016 before moving to Lincoln Center, people were kind of shocked by how real it felt. Usually, when male playwrights write teenage girls, they're either manic pixies or victims. DeLappe didn't do that. She wrote athletes. She wrote warriors who happen to be obsessed with the Khmer Rouge and the timing of their periods at the same time. This play stays with you because it refuses to apologize for the messiness of being sixteen.
What the Play The Wolves Actually Gets Right About Teenagers
Most stage plays rely on heavy exposition. You know the vibe: two characters sit down and explain their entire backstory in five minutes of "As you know, Father..." dialogue. The Wolves throws that out the window. The dialogue is overlapping. It's frantic. It’s exactly how a group of teammates actually speaks during warm-ups.
- The Overlap: DeLappe writes the script with columns. Characters speak over each other constantly. It’s a rhythmic, percussive experience that mirrors the physical intensity of the sport they play.
- The Anonymity: The characters aren't given names in the script. They are numbers. #11, #25, #46. This sounds like it would make them ciphers, but honestly, it does the opposite. By stripping away names, we focus on their roles within the group dynamic—the leader, the outcast, the peacemaker.
- The Stakes: To an outsider, a conversation about a teammate's concussion or a new girl moving into a "yogurt" house might seem trivial. To these girls, it’s life and death. The play understands that at seventeen, your social standing is your survival.
One of the most striking things about seeing the play produced is the lack of adults. For ninety minutes, we are trapped in the bubble of adolescence. When an adult finally does appear—the "Soccer Mom" at the very end—the shift in tone is jarring. It’s a reminder that the world these girls have built for themselves is fragile. It can be popped by the reality of the outside world in a second.
The Technical Brilliance of the "Warm-Up"
Every scene in the play takes place during the team’s pre-game warm-ups. This is a brilliant structural choice. It means the actors are constantly moving. They are stretching, lunging, passing balls, and doing high-knees while delivering incredibly dense dialogue.
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The physicality serves a purpose. It grounds the play in the body. So much of the female experience is about the body—how it looks, how it performs, how it bleeds, how it breaks. By having the characters literally "in their bodies" the entire time, DeLappe highlights the transition from childhood play to adult physical reality.
Take #46, the new girl. She’s the one who lives in a yurt (or so the rumors say). She’s socially awkward, but she’s a phenomenal player. Her inclusion in the pack isn't based on her personality initially; it’s based on her utility. Can she help them win? That’s the core of the team’s ethos. It’s a meritocracy shrouded in a clique.
Why the Ending Hits So Hard (Spoilers Ahead)
If you haven't seen the play or read the script, the shift in the final movements is a total gut punch. For most of the runtime, The Wolves is funny. It’s fast. It’s snappy. Then, tragedy strikes.
The death of one of the teammates (off-stage, of course) changes the molecular structure of the group. The final scene isn't a warm-up. It's a mourning ritual disguised as a warm-up. The way the girls navigate grief—some through silence, some through performative outbursts—is painfully accurate.
It highlights the "wolves" metaphor. When one member of the pack is lost, the rest have to figure out how to reform the line. They have to decide if they are still a team or just a group of strangers who happen to wear the same jersey. It’s a brutal look at how quickly the "immortality" of youth can be stripped away.
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Real-World Impact and Legacy
Since its Pulitzer Prize for Drama-finalist run, the play has become a staple for university and regional theaters. Why? Because it offers nine meaty, complex roles for young women. That is surprisingly rare in the theater world.
Think about the standard "high school" plays. The Crucible? You’ve got Abigail Williams, but she’s often played as a villainous archetype. Mean Girls the musical? It’s a satire. The Wolves is a slice-of-life realism that treats the internal lives of girls with the same weight as a Shakespearean tragedy.
- Pulitzer Recognition: In 2017, it was a finalist, losing out to Sweat by Lynn Nottage. Both plays deal with community and the fear of the "other," just in very different settings.
- Global Reach: It’s been produced in London, Australia, and all over the US. The themes of tribalism and female friendship are universal.
- The "Soccer" Factor: Using sports as a lens for drama isn't new, but using soccer—a sport of endurance and constant movement—perfectly matches the frantic energy of puberty.
Navigating the Themes of Tribalism
Deep down, the play is about how we define "us" versus "them."
The girls talk about the Khmer Rouge not because they are budding historians (though some are), but because they are trying to understand the extremes of human behavior. They are testing out their own moralities. They argue about whether they should feel bad for a criminal or whether a teammate’s social faux pas is "forgivable."
It’s tribalism in its purest form. The "us" is the circle of the warm-up. The "them" is everyone else: the other teams, the parents, the boys, the world. When that circle is broken, the play suggests that our identity is much more precarious than we’d like to admit.
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Actionable Ways to Experience The Wolves
If you're a theater student, a coach, or just someone who loves a good script, there are a few ways to really "get" this play.
- Read the Script first: Don't just watch a clip on YouTube. Read the way DeLappe formats the dialogue. Pay attention to the slash marks (/) which indicate where the next character should start speaking. It’s like reading a musical score.
- Look for Local Productions: This is a play that demands to be seen live. The sound of the cleats on the turf and the heavy breathing of the actors adds a layer of reality that a film (if there ever is one) could never capture.
- Analyze the Silence: In a play that is 90% talking, the moments where no one speaks are the most important. Look for the "beats." What is being said when they are just running laps?
- Compare it to the "Teen" Canon: If you're a writer, look at how this differs from Heathers or Lady Bird. It’s less about the "crush" and more about the "self."
The Wolves isn't just a play about soccer. It’s not even just a play about girls. It’s a play about the terrifying, exhilarating, and often violent process of becoming a person. It reminds us that before we were "adults" or "professionals," we were part of a pack. And that pack defined everything.
To truly understand the impact, look at the final "chant" the girls do. It’s loud, it’s aggressive, and it’s a reclamation of space. It’s a reminder that even in the face of loss, the pack survives.
To engage more deeply with the text, focus on the character of #00, the goalie. Her struggle with performance anxiety and her literal physical manifestations of stress (vomiting before games) provides a crucial counterpoint to the bravado of the other girls. Observing the quietest character often reveals the loudest truths in DeLappe's writing.