The latest production at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte has an athletic flair and a Winthrop touch. ATC’s “The Wolves” is directed by Winthrop theatre professor Sarah Provencal, and the all-female cast includes Winthrop theatre students Maggie Goldin and Emily O’Regan. The show began preview performances Oct. 3, officially opens Oct. 9 and runs through Oct. 26.
“The Wolves” tells the story of a high school girls soccer team, identified only by their numbers. The play explores their interactions with one another during warmups before their weekly games, as they carry on overlapping conversations about the struggles of adolescence, sexuality, mental health, human rights issues, and topics as unusual as snake handling. “The interesting thing about the show is the way that the dialogue is very realistic, very naturalistic in fact. It’ll jump back and forth. They’ll be having these conversations simultaneously,” says director Sarah Provencal. “There’s a lot of overlapping and chaos but then there are some really beautiful moments. You see the characters as a team and you see their group dynamic, but then we also have these solo moments with the girls where we get to see a little bit more deeply into their psyche and it’s really quite lovely.”
According to Provencal, “The Wolves” premiered in 2016, and in 2017 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the highest honor in dramatic literature. Provencal was drawn to the show due to its all-female storyline and the strength of the characters. “My favorite thing about the show is the elevation of the female voice,” Provencal says. “I also like that they’re high school girls, and they’re not portrayed as victims. They have things like mental health issues, one of them has an eating disorder, they have real things that they’re going through, but the show kind of shows how strong they are. I know a lot of times people in our thirties shake our fists at Gen Z, but this shows how powerful Gen Z is, and how they have this different kind of emotional intelligence. They have strength, they have empathy, and they can deal with hardship better than the Baby Boomer generation can in many ways.”
Junior theatre performance major Emily O’Regan plays #25. O’Regan stepped into the role at the last minute, learning her lines in less than a week and only having two weeks of rehearsals before preview performances began. “My experience has been a little bit different than the other cast members because I was not part of the original cast. I auditioned back in May, didn’t get cast, moved on with my life. Sarah called me on Thursday – last Thursday – and said ‘#25 dropped, we need you to fill in’. I got my script on Friday, had my first rehearsal on Saturday, Sarah said ‘be off book by Wednesday’. So, it has been a little stressful. I’m already off book for three out of the five scenes.”
According to O’Regan, #25 is the team captain and daughter of the former coach. “She tries to have a lot of authority and be the captain that everyone needs, but she’s not all that confident in it. She’s very classic, she doesn’t like a lot of strong language.” O’Regan says. “I have a speech in the third week where I’m basically motivating my players, and I always feel really hyped up and excited to do that.”
One of the unique challenges presented by “The Wolves” is the physically demanding warmup scenes. “It is a very physically demanding show because it’s about an all-girls soccer team. So, while giving dialogue and stage directions, we’re also doing warmups. We do high knees, jumping jacks, butt kicks, we do sprints, we do lunges, and all these various workout things. I end the show more tired than I have with any other show I’ve ever done,” O’Regan says.
According to Provencal, she and the cast worked with two different soccer coaches to develop the workout scenes. “We had a guy who is an actual high school girls’ soccer coach come in, he actually watched our run-through last night and gave us some feedback on authenticity. That’s been a really important thing for us because I cast actors, I didn’t cast athletes, although they’ve become athletes. And all the actors that I cast had a really great physical presence. So, learning soccer has been a really fun challenge for me.”
While the end result is largely the same, Provencal says that the process of professional theatre versus educational theatre is entirely different. “The big difference is in expectation. In educational theatre, there’s an expectation from the director to help the actors develop their technique. So, the director will lead warmups, the director will do acting exercises. In professional theatre there’s just not time for that. The actors are expected to warm up on their own, and the director can say ‘the scene needs to feel more like this’ and then let the actor figure it out.” Provencal says. “As an educator, you have to get your students ready for that professional setting where they’re not going to be handheld as much.”
“The Wolves” is performed in Hadley Theater at Queens University in Charlotte, and seating is general admission. Performances begin at 7:30 on Wednesday and Thursday nights, 8:00 on Friday and Saturday nights and 2:30 on Sundays. Regular tickets are $30, but are $15 for teachers, students and military with a valid ID. For more information, visit https://atcharlotte.org/event/the-wolves/
Photo: Sam Ross/ The Johnsonian
