DRAMATURG’S NOTE
by Cameron Sheppard, Dramaturg for The Wolves
Sarah DeLappe’s debut play, The Wolves, premiered in September 2016, garnering widespread praise and becoming a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The raw, honest depiction of young women grappling with social and political issues successfully subverts many of the gender paradigms of US-American theatre. As women continue the fight for gender parity in theatre, waves of change seem to be rippling through the industry, and DeLappe is certainly a powerful instigator. She writes complex, dimensional characters without falling into archetypal portrayals of highschool girls. Commenting on her approach, she writes, “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.” The Wolves also explores the coexistence of the mundane realities of everyday life with the profound events that shape our national and global political landscapes. Influenced by the fast-paced war films she watched as a child, DeLappe’s dialogue ricochets from one character to another. Instead of being thrust into a war, however, the women of The Wolves warm up for their next soccer match. The show demands an elevated level of focus and precision from its actors as they execute the carefully orchestrated, relatable, beautiful chaos DeLappe’s work embraces. Her portrayal of these young women is exciting and complex, much like the young women themselves. The Wolves is undoubtedly part of a movement of US-American theatre that celebrates multi-dimensional representations of women and girls. In an interview with Forbes, DeLappe remarks, “I didn’t intend to rewrite the way we think about women onstage, but I won’t apologize for any of it.”
-Cameron Sheppard, Dramaturg