Soccer on Stage

Kimberly Mohne Hill got physical directing a play about girls soccer at City Lights Theater in San Jose.

Soccer on Stage
A scene from The Wolves, a play about a girls high school soccer team, directed by Associate Theatre and Dance Professor Kimberly Mohne Hill for City Lights Theater in San Jose. / Image courtesy City Lights

Every theater director doubles as a researcher. For Associate Theatre and Dance Professor Kimberly Mohne Hill, directing a recent fall production of The Wolves required a slightly more kinetic approach than usual.

The play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist written by Sarah DeLappe, centers around the pregame conversations of a high school girls soccer team. Half of Mohne Hill’s actors had never played the game before. They needed to “look like world-class athletes” forCity Lights Theater in San Jose, Mohne Hill says—so she immersed them and herself in the world of cleats and ball-handling.

“We were out on a lawn, and we were kicking a ball around and figuring it out together as a group,” Mohne Hill says. The cast also spent the first few weeks of rehearsal with the Santa Clara women’s soccer team, who helped them become soccer stars on the stage.

The Wolves gave Mohne Hill the opportunity to direct the minutiae of humanity that she loves.“As a director, I’m a very big fan of taking what we see in our everyday lives and bringing it back to the stage on some level, and just sort of holding a spotlight up to a little moment of humanity,” she says.

The production, entirely run by women, featured several other Broncos. Elena Maddy ’20 as the play’s assistant director, Sara Session ’19 in the role of assistant stage manager, Mary Baronitis ’17 as lighting designer and Janine Saunders Evans ’97 acting the part of Soccer Mom.

 

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