For her directorial debut, actress Elizabeth Hay has scored Sarah DeLappe’s striking 2016 play about a soccer team’s conversations while warming up, 'The Wolves', to be presented by a new player on the South Australian theatre field, RUMPUS Theatre.
Since graduating from Flinders Drama Centre in 2010, Elizabeth Hay has worked with the best that South Australia has to offer, including State Theatre Company, Slingsby, Patch, and Windmill. For her first time in the director’s chair, she presides over a work that, like the fare of Windmill, speaks to teens in an authentic way, as she explains.
“I would say that it’s a show for everyone but we’re really excited to see what teenage audiences think of it. Now that we’ve done a closer interrogation of the play, we think that it’s pitched at about year ten and up.”
“The language that the characters use is really familiar and you know how sometimes when there’s a play about teenagers written about an adult, the language can seem really naff and a bit irrelevant?”
“It sits really well in the mouth, and the characters come across really naturalistic.”
The work, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, features the interweaving dialogue of ten young female soccer players as they stretch their quads and hammies each week prior to taking to the field. According to Elizabeth, the playwright not only captures how young girls speak, but also fundamental truths about group conversation.
“You just get this beautiful cacophony that sings for a bit and then dies down, just like a real conversation would.”
In the three years since the play’s debut, this chorus of sound has been heard all around the world, with the work striking a chord. Elizabeth believes that 'The Wolves'’ success, in part, is due to the show’s large number of young female roles.
“I don’t know if I’ve seen or read many plays like it, which is what attracted [producer] Bec [Mayo] and I to it; especially a cast of ten women, you don’t see work like that.”
“A lot of [the cast] would normally be pitted against each other in auditions. They’d see a young woman role in a play and all be lining up for it, so it was a really nice opportunity for us to bring everyone together.”
“We’ve got some really new grads from AC Arts and Flinders Uni, we’ve got a couple who’ve had a few years out in the industry; Rachel Burke’s just finished her time with the State Theatre ensemble, so we’ve got a really nice range of people.”
Making the leap across to becoming a director is an exciting opportunity for Elizabeth which was made possible by the founding of RUMPUS midway through last year. At their new home at 100 Sixth Street, Bowden, RUMPUS has begun to build a community of artists, has facilitated the pooling of resources and challenged audiences with their first production about a sex shop 'XXX Neon Sign' in September. They featured two works in October, 'Baby Plays' and 'The Split', presented 'Yerma' in November, and will close out the year with 'The Wolves'.
While 'The Wolves' might appear to be an innocuous exploration of team sport, there is a sting in the tail of this work too.
“It’s one of those plays where nothing really happens but then you get this huge emotional impact where it has been building through the play. While it’s not action-packed with twists and turns, there’s something simmering through most of the play and then you get this flip and you see how the characters have to get on with their lives.”
