From cooking to showering, fresh coffee and laundry, we often take the availability of clean water for granted. Yet when Henrik Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People in 1882, the specialty of bacteriology was in its infancy, and viruses had yet to be discovered, so scientists had just begun to understand how diseases could…
It’s never been easy to be a teenage girl. Between cafeteria politics, pressure to succeed in academics and extra-curricular activities and facing issues of self-esteem, body image and hyper-sexualization, teenage girls manage an extraordinary amount of expectations both from within their peer group and the world of adults. The inner lives of teenage girls are…
“Nine girls in uniform stretch in a circle on an AstroTurf indoor soccer field. They do the same stretch at the same time for the same amount of time.” This first stage direction in The Wolves introduces us to the activity that the 16- and 17-year-old characters will do for most of the play: warming…
On crisp autumn nights at Chicago’s Toyota Park, fans cheer on a professional soccer team. The crowd size, however, depends on which team is on the field. More than 17,000 fans typically pack in to support the Chicago Fire. But attendance for the Chicago Red Stars hovers around only 3,000. The difference? The Red Stars’…
If there’s a theatrical equivalent to scoring a championship-winning goal, 26 year-old playwright Sarah DeLappe has certainly done it with her soccer-themed play, The Wolves—written as a graduate student at Brooklyn College. DeLappe earned a spot among the 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalists for the New York premiere of her debut play, which received two encore…
In casting The Wolves, the Goodman faced a unique task: find actors who could deliver a compelling story of teenage girls on the brink of adulthood, who have the stamina to remain on stage for the entire 90-minute play and who could perform intricate soccer drills. Associate Casting Director Erica Sartini-Combs and Casting Coordinator Rachael…
For decades, the competitive and energizing world of sports has been the backdrop for many acclaimed theatrical works. From Clifford Odets’ boxing-themed drama Golden Boy to the baseball centric Damn Yankees and Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, writers use athletics to create high-stakes drama, to build atmosphere and as a metaphor for life’s challenges. Yet…
March 11, 1985 Dear Mr. General Secretary, As you assume your new responsibilities, I would like to take the opportunity to underscore my hope that we can, in the months and years ahead, develop a more stable and constructive relationship between our two countries… Thus began President Ronald Reagan’s first letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, the…
In 1985, after decades of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev assembled for a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. These men, representing two of the world’s superpowers, sat in cream-colored armchairs; once the photographers had captured the occasion on film, only interpreters were…
RONALD WILSON REAGAN (1911 – 2004) Born in northern Illinois in the second decade of a new century, Ronald Reagan grew up in a poor family, his father an Irish Catholic traveling salesman. At age 11, he chose to be baptized a Protestant, his mother’s faith. Attending Eureka College, “Dutch” (as his father nicknamed him) was a…
