ABSTRACT
A pounding drumbeat rises over the din of audience chatter; lights dim to focus on the green astroturf that covers the thrust stage. Nine young women march into the space. They walk with purpose, arms swinging, some smiling with obvious pride. They are dressed in identical soccer uniforms: red jerseys and knee socks, black shorts. They form a circle, facing inward, facing each other. They lunge forward in formation. These are the opening moments of Sarah DeLappe’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Wolves , as realized in the Howland Company/Crow’s Theatre production mounted in Toronto in 2018. The Wolves reframes the terms by which postfeminist neoliberalism commodifies girlhood for our pleasurable consumption, and it does so by telling girlhood stories through a critical blend of sportful embodiment and deliberately fractured, frequently hilarious narrative. The cultural and economic framework called neoliberalism relies on girls as one of its primary cultural ambassadors.
