A team of nine young performers is hitting the field (stage) this month in The Wolves, a play from Renaissance Theaterworks and First Stage’s Young Company that follows a high school soccer team during pre-game warmups. The actors in the play are all teenagers (with the exception of the one adult – a soccer mom).
Director Elyse Edelman has been on core faculty at the Young Company for five years, so she knows the girls well. When selecting the cast, she wanted to ensure the young women understood the responsibilities of being in a professional show.
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“We often say that actors are athletes in terms of needing to be as physically ready for the athletic demands of performing, but it is a special skill, and they’ve been really into it,” Edelman says, adding that the auditions included soccer drills, as the actors will be doing soccer warm ups and drills on the stage as part of the show.
The play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist written by Sarah DeLappe, is often cast with young women in college or out of school who look young but aren’t teens. “But there’s something about the 16-year-old speaking the words of a 16-year-old,” says Edelman. “It’s different.”
The show touches on issues many teenagers face, like identity, ambition, relationships and societal expectations, Edelman says. “This is a play at a professional company that you can bring your grandchildren, your daughters to, and have an interesting conversation after,” Edelman says. ”
The Wolves runs Jan. 21 -Feb. 11 at Next Act Theatre (255 S. Water St.).
