The Wolves

Director’s Statement

When my proposal to direct The Wolves last April was rejected, I could not have possibly imagined getting to stage it like this less than a year later. This is such an important show for so many reasons, in playwriting, in feminist theatre, but it’s also a personally important show to me. The first time I ever read it, I was so enthralled by the hyperrealistic and brutal world of the play that I immediately knew I wanted to direct it. I really think there’s something in this show for everyone, whether you’ve played team sports, whether you’ve been a teenage girl or not- there’s something visceral and almost primally relatable about watching these girls, who claim to be friends, rip each other apart, one by one, for seemingly no reason. Even though wolf-pack-type social dynamics have been debunked since the play was written, there’s obviously something that still rings true about that ideology to this day in order to make those archetypes still so culturally relevant and pervasive.  

The truth is, being a girl is hard, and being a teenage girl is harder, and it’s really easy to forget the reality of that when we have the luxury of hindsight with an adult brain and a wider breadth of experience. But, the emotional experience of the teenage girl is still just as real and valid and important, even when we aren’t necessarily engaged with it anymore, and deserves to be treated as such. I can say with absolute certainty that the worst time in my life was, and likely will forever be, being a preteen girl, and I think there’s a huge amount of people who resonate with that, and, in turn, the cosmic horror of this play. I have always read The Wolves as not a comedy, or a coming-of-age story, but a psychological thriller, because nothing else seems to be able to quite capture the existential horror of being a teenage girl.
- Mira Zimmerman