Soho Rep in Association with Ma-Yi Theater Company Will Present Hansol Jung's WOLF PLAY

Soho Rep., in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company, will present Hansol Jung's mischievous and affecting new work, Wolf Play, directed by Dustin Wills, March 17-April 19. 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 (a professional boxer, Ash, and Ash's wife, Robin) undergo the strange, fraught process of becoming a family.

A "sense of being unmoored affects the characters [Jung] writes about," American Theater notes of the playwright, who was born in South Korea, spent part of her childhood in South Africa, returned to South Korea, before moving to New York in 2010. With a rivetingly unpredictable sense of theatrical invention, Jung (Wild Goose Dreams, Among the Dead, Cardboard Piano) has explored experiences of displacement across cultural, national, digital, and political realities.

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. This was also a time when the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.S. was at a peak. 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 how do people make family when the idea of it is no longer bound by a traditional sense of biological family? 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. I was trying to answer those questions for myself through those characters, and in using the different framework of the wolf and the puppet, I could make something more kaleidoscopic out of the actual issue."

The resulting work, Wolf Play, considers emotionally messy questions about what family truly means-how to attain it, and who is allowed to have it.

Dustin Wills says, "Because a puppet breaks down the essential functions of a human being and engages our imagination in filling in the rest, the puppet in the play becomes markedly more human-and the adults seem more like feral animals. I'm interested here in how basic animal instincts like love and survival are always vibrating underneath our socialized selves."

Wolf Play's cast features Chris Bannow (Oklahoma! and The Elephant Man on Broadway, The Hairy Ape at Park Avenue Armory) as Peter, Jin Ha (M. Butterfly on Broadway, Hamilton: An American Musical Chicago Production; Upcoming: Alex Garland's FX on Hulu series Devs) as Wolf, Esco Jouléy as Ash, Ian Quinlan (Orange Is the New Black, Gotham) as Ryan, and Nicole Villamil (Network on Broadway, How to Load a Musket at 59E59, Tell Me I'm Not Crazy at Williamstown Theatre Festival) as Robin. The creative team includes Mariana Sanchez (Scenic Design), Enver Chakartash (Costume Design), Barbara Samuels (Lighting Design), Kate Marvin (Sound Design), Amanda Villalobos (Puppet Design), and J. David Brimmer (Fight Director). Stage management includes Anita Shastri (Stage Manager) and Jessica Taylor Edwards (Assistant Stage Manager).

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Wolf Play will be performed March 17-April 19 at Soho Rep., located at 46 Walker Street in Manhattan.

The production opens officially on the night of March 28.

Tickets-$35 general/$65 premium-can be purchased by visiting sohorep.org or calling 212.352.3101. $30 general rush and $20 student rush (with a valid school ID) tickets are available at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain for each performance. $0.99 Sunday tickets will be offered March 29, April 5 & 12 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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