This past weekend, the awkward era of teenagers’ lives was perfectly captured in McComas Hall Theatre by Theatre MSU’s recent student production “The Wolves.”
“The Wolves” follows the story of a girls’ soccer team gearing up for games and discussing the complex and simple hardships of life. The players are only referred to by their jersey numbers throughout the play, resulting in the all-female cast working as a team to tell the story of these teenagers.
Mari Parker, a first-year medical technology student who played the newest member of the soccer team, #46, explained that the play was simply about life and relationships.
“The play is about a girl soccer team that ends up gaining a new player, and they end up talking about some stuff that is going on,” Parker said. “And then some stuff happens in their lives, but they end up growing together a bit.”
As simplistic as that sounds, the play manages to accurately capture the mindset of its teenage characters, as the characters discuss topics in their lives that range from intense critiques of the world to worrying about whether or not a zit on their face is noticeable. Along the way, relationships are formed, unlikely friendships are created and older ones die, both in the metaphorical and, in one devastating case, literal sense of the word.
In a play that focuses on soldiering through the hardships and challenges that life has to offer, it is almost poetic that the production was filled with challenges as well.
Kala Morris, a Mississippi State University graduate student and director of the play, mentioned that there were issues when it came to the casting of the show.
“We actually had something where one of our actors told us that they weren’t able to, they weren’t going to be able to perform in one of our shows only like a week before the show,” Morris said. “Me and my team had to kind of scramble to find someone to understudy for the role and only, you know, give them a week to prepare in comparison to the six weeks that the rest of the cast had to prepare.”
Morris acknowledged that while normally the process of bringing in a new actor at the last second can disrupt the chemistry that has been created by the rest of the cast, in this case, it allowed life to imitate art. Morris stated that the situation “almost made the show better and allowed the cast to work together to overcome adversity.”
“As cheesy as that sounds, it ended up making everyone feel proud of what they put on because of what they go through,” Morris said.
All that hard work did indeed pay off in the end, as the Friday night performance of “The Wolves” ended with applause and cheer from the audience.
Elliot Douglas, a local Starkville resident who went to the play with a friend, praised the play for its fast and engaging pacing.
“It was really good,” Douglas said. “I was engaged the whole time and was never bored or anything. I would definitely see it again.”
Another Starkville resident, Bryce Sangster, praised the play for its engaging characters, realistic dialogue and emotional storyline.
“I thought the girls all did really good,” Sangster said. “They had really good lines. I thought the dialogue was very interesting. I thought the plot twist was good, it shocked me and got a tear out of me. Overall, I think it was pretty good. I enjoyed it.”
