When Sports and Theatre Come Together
The USD Theatre Department’s first production of the year will be “The Wolves”.
It is a contemporary play that follows a high school girls’ indoor soccer team through their indoor practices, as well as their personal lives off the field.
Director Chaya Gordon-Bland and assistant director Syara Villarreal, a first-year Master of Fine Arts student, say that this play is a coming-of-age story that can also speak to adult audiences.
“It’s a very beautiful display of female friendship,” Villarreal said.
“[The characters] really find ways to come together throughout soccer and throughout life.”
Not only does this play combine the sport of soccer with the stage, but the actors trained with the USD soccer team. This soccer camp took place the week before school started.
“Every day that week we did a soccer camp,” Gordon-Bland said. “The first chunk would be observing the USD women’s soccer practice. Our young women would then take the field as well and learn warm-ups, do physical training, do soccer drills and get a hands-on experience.”
On the last day of camp, both the actors and the soccer players joined in a scrimmage where everyone played a game together.
“It was awesome, it was a really fun collaborative experience that I have never had before,” Meg Cook, who plays a swing for #25, #13 and Soccer Mom, said. “They were very, very patient with us which was really appreciated. The fact that they were not only willing to help us but they also seemed really excited about being able to collaborate in this with us, it was just a lot of fun.”
A swing is similar to an understudy. While an understudy just studies one character, a swing is responsible for multiple different characters when the principal actor cannot attend a production.
For both the directors and the actors, one of the biggest difficulties in this play is not even the physicality of the play, but the script itself, which is filled with a plethora of overlapping dialogue.
“[There’s] a lot of overlapping dialogue, it’s really funny though because if you listen on one conversation, you’re like what,” Jade Oswald, who plays #11, said. “It’s a play that you don’t normally see.
There’s never a dull moment and there’s always something happening even if you don’t always see it.”
The central theme of the play is coming of age, offering an intimate look into the lives of the teenage girls, while still resonating with a wide range of audiences.
“I think [the play] can 100% resonate with teenagers, but then it also resonates with adults because these are still conversations people have,” Villarreal said. “These are still such deep topics that maybe people are even still scared to talk about or scared to confront within themselves.”
Additionally, Gordon-Bland says that this is a bold piece of theatre that will offer a unique experience to audiences.
“It’s very different than other theatrical productions, where the audience is going to take a ride with these girls and get to enjoy the exhilaration at the end of that after having gone through all the hard things with the girls,” Gordon-Bland said.
The first showing will be on Sept. 27-29 and then additional shows on Oct. 3-6 in the Knutson Theatre.
