Soho Rep Extends Hansol Jung's WOLF PLAY

Soho Rep, in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company, has added two weeks of performances to the New York premiere of Hansol Jung's Wolf Play, a mischievous and affecting new work, directed by Dustin Wills, about the families we choose and unchoose. The run will now continue through Sunday, March 20. The theater today also announced two post-show events that further illuminate one of the central themes of the play: queer parenting.

When a young South Korean boy-represented onstage as a puppet operated by a "wolf"-is "re-homed" via a website chat room, he and his brand-new parents (Ash, a professional boxer, and Robin a video game maker) undergo the strange, fraught process of becoming a family. Postponed from March 2020, Wolf Play, in a since-updated staging, asks poignant questions about live theater's capacity to change us and what we think we see.

Wolf Play was inspired by a series of articles Jung read in Reuters in 2013 and 2014 about Americans using "Yahoo message boards, Facebook groups and other online sites to 're-home' unwanted children"-most commonly international adoptees. Re-homing was again spotlit in 2020 in the harrowing story of YouTube stars Myka and James Stauffer giving away the son they adopted from China. As The Atlantic wrote in 2018 on the subject of "re-homing," "between 1 and 5 percent of U.S. adoptions get legally dissolved each year."

Jung says, "I've always been interested in stories of departure and landing and the liminal spaces in between and was considering what roots a person to a place and to other people within it. And how do people make family when the idea of it is no longer bound by a traditional sense of biological family?" She considered how "in the queer community, people talk a lot about 'chosen family'-in terms of how you create your own community and who you decide your family is." The resulting work asks emotionally messy questions about what family truly means-how to attain it, and who is allowed to have it.

Soho Rep has programmed two events that will take place during the extension:

Queer Women, Trans Men, and Non-Binary Folk Affinity Night, March 12

Queer women, trans men, and non-binary folk are invited to a special performance of Wolf Play, hosted by playwright Hansol Jung, and to a post-show conversation with Hansol and other special guests. Hansol says, "The play dances around the problem of perceived masculinity. The play takes the position that the construct of masculinity as a measuring tool of human excellence hurts everyone involved, but mostly those who have not achieved said excellence by being not a cis man (female, non-binary, trans, wolf). My desire is to fill the room for a night with all peoples who have been deemed less than excellent just because of this rubbish feature of our society." All tickets to this performance are $35.

An Evening with The Great Gay [Black] Dadcast, March 14

Raja Feather Kelly and Cheo Bourne, co-hosts of The Great Gay [Black] Dadcast, talk live, in-person about the subject of the podcast: their experiences as Black gay men and their journeys to start families. They offer their experience as guidance and their stories as comfort. Having learned first-hand that there aren't many resources for non-traditional family-building, Raja and Cheo created the podcast to provide one-to talk listeners through the details, hurdles, joys, and hard stuff of surrogacy. Raja and Cheo explain, "We want to normalize gay parenting, we want to celebrate surrogacy, we want to reach out and create a community for Black gay days, but most importantly we want to be a resource for all parents." Season 2 of the show launches soon.

Wolf Play's cast features Esco Jouléy as Ash, Brandon Mendez Homer as Ryan, Aubie Merrylees as Peter, Nicole Villamil as Robin, and Mitchell Winter as Wolf. The creative team includes You-Shin Chen (Scenic Design), Enver Chakartash (Costume Design), Barbara Samuels (Lighting Design), Kate Marvin (Sound Design), Amanda Villalobos (Puppet Design), Lake Simons (Puppet Coach), J. David Brimmer (Fight Director), and Hannah Roccisano (Fight Choreographer). Stage management includes A.K. Howard (Stage Manager) and Eliza Anastasio (Assistant Stage Manager).

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

The New York premiere of Wolf Play began previews on February 2 and opens officially on February 14. Performances now take place through March 20 at Soho Rep, located at 46 Walker Street in Manhattan.

Press performance are:

Friday, February 11 at 7:30pm

Saturday, February 12 at 3pm

Saturday, February 12 at 7:30pm

Sunday, February 13, at 7:30pm

Tickets-$35 general admission through March 6, and $55 from March 8 through March 20-can be purchased by visiting sohorep.org or calling 646-586-8982. $20 rush tickets are available at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain for each performance. $0.99 Sunday tickets will be offered Feb 20 and 27 and March 6 at 7:30pm. They are available first come, first served at the box office only. There are no advance sales for Rush or $0.99 Sunday tickets.

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