‘Wolf Play’: Barnard Theatre’s portrait of found family

The Barnard theatre department’s production of “Wolf Play,” which ran November 20-22 in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, rewired perceptions of family with a fierce, contemporary tenderness.

Photo provided by Maria Baranova

By Roxy Rassooly

January 12, 2026

From November 20-22, the Barnard theatre department brought South Korean playwright Hansol Jung’s “Wolf Play” (2021) to the Glicker-Milstein Theatre. Directed by Professor Gisela Cardenas, the play followed Jeenu (Felicity Chen, BC ’29), a young Korean boy who was adopted and then transferred to a new family through an online posting. That family consisted of Robin (Gaia Di Mitri, BC ’26) and Ash (Jasmine Richards, BC ’26), a queer couple navigating what it meant to build a home on their own terms. At its core, “Wolf Play” was a story about belonging, and this production depicted the complicated, often painful paths that Jeenu, Robin, and Ash walked as they tried to become a family. In her director’s note, Cardenas described this process as a kind of “rewirement” — a reworking of traditional ideas about family, identity, and who is allowed to belong. 

A central motif in the play was Jeenu’s belief that he was a lone wolf, a coping mechanism that stemmed from never having had a real family or community. During his monologues, Jeenu would often start by making a general claim about wolves and their behavior, using them as a way to speak about himself. Throughout the play, he grew from viewing himself as a lone wolf to being part of a pack. In the production, “pack” became a substitute for ideas of safety, belonging, and mutual protection — a group of people he could fight for and who would fight for him. 

Throughout the play, Chen wore a wolf hat and held and manipulated a small, white, faceless puppet, voicing Jeenu’s inner monologue. Barnard’s production used the puppet to represent Jeenu, while his wolf-like identity was portrayed by Chen. With its blank wooden surface and childlike proportions, the puppet became a blank canvas, a way to show that Jeenu had not previously been allowed to exist fully within his own identity until joining Robin and Ash’s family. Jeenu’s previous family renamed him Peter after his adoptive father, played by Umer Naru (GS ’27), a choice that hinted at the erasure of his prior identity. The white-painted puppet reinforced this visually, separating Jeenu’s physical presence from the inner voice and essence embodied by Chen. 

One of this production’s major strengths was the acting, with the actors managing to fulfill the roles of familiar archetypes while also subverting them. Di Mitri’s Robin radiated a warm, maternal, and fiercely protective energy, marked by excited, charged body language, frequent hand gestures, and an inability to sit still for very long. Richards’ Ash initially appeared gruff and guarded, which came across with body language that was more reserved and still. Robin’s brother, Ryan (Maxwell Beck Seelig, CC ’26), was portrayed as a well-meaning but misguided embodiment of slightly obnoxious, attention-seeking masculinity. Every entrance Seelig’s Ryan made was loud, making his presence known by an un-self-conscious ease that assumed the room belonged to him. His stance was wide, he took up as much space as possible, and he spoke more than he listened. 

Finally, Chen’s Jeenu conveyed the emotional world of this complex character with clarity. Chen managed to act while maneuvering the puppet attached to her hands and feet. Beyond that, Chen had to balance the physicality of depicting Jeenu’s wolf self with the actual character. Chen howled, growled, and moved on the floor but, at the same time, ensured that the audience read Jeenu’s wolf identity as metaphor, not fact. Chen seamlessly oscillated between being more wolf and being more boy, fully fleshing out the character and his nuance. 

Costuming also helped articulate the characters’ roles and the play’s exploration of family “rewirement,” led by costume designer Oana Botez, an adjunct associate professor at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama. In a particularly memorable moment late in the play, Ryan entered wearing metallic gold pleather high-top sneakers. The squeak of the shoes and their exaggerated shine drew laughter from the audience, and the exaggerated interpretation of masculinity as a performance primed viewers for the upcoming argument about Jeenu needing a “real” father figure. The costume captured Ryan’s persona perfectly: an inflated confidence that verged on performative swagger. 

The production drew this contrast further through the costuming of the couple. Robin’s feminine, ’70s-inspired, airy, and colorful wardrobe underscored a warm disposition while adding nuance to the strength with which Robin approached challenges. Ash’s more tomboyish, athletic clothing contrasted with an emotional vulnerability, complicating any easy, conventional reading of who played which role within the household. This kept with the overall theme of the play, “rewiring,” as the characters leaned into and subverted prescriptive roles. The costuming highlighted what it means to create a family in the current moment, when gender identity is no longer regarded as a marker of parental capability. Part of doing this comes from visual presentation, so by making Robin and Ash so different from each other in terms of the way they dressed, Barnard Theatre both subverted and spotlighted gender identity and its implications. 

The set design, helmed by New York-based set and lighting designer Maruti Evans also played a huge role in the overall production. Most scenes, whether tender bonding moments, tense arguments, or explosive fights, took place in the kitchen. Using the kitchen as the primary setting reinforced its traditional status as the heart of the home. It became a visual and emotional anchor, blending the play’s theme of family rewirement with a symbol universally recognized as the center of domestic life. Moreover, the 1970s aesthetic extended beyond the costumes and into the set design, making Robin and Ash’s home appear as warm and inviting as possible. 

Lastly, the lighting used throughout the play also had a significant impact. During Jeenu’s monologues, when his wolf essence reflected on his own identity, the stage darkened entirely, except for a cool blue spotlight isolating Chen. It had the effect of making those moments feel like an intimate conversation between Jeenu and the audience, inviting us into his inner world and making us participants in the rewiring taking place before us. Similarly, during an intense fight scene, the most important of Ash’s career, the entire stage was swathed in purple, adding to the edge-of-your-seat energy of that moment. Both moments contrasted with the neutral lighting used in the domestic scenes, which grounded the home as a space of relative calm and safety. These lighting details also stemmed from the work of Evans, alongside Bryan C. Jackson (GS ’26) as lighting technician and Angel Qiao (BC ’25) as light board operator. 

Barnard Theatre’s production of “Wolf Play” was a story of finding family — your pack — and its potential trials and tribulations. Beyond the play’s broader themes, this production exemplified how design, particularly costuming, can foreground the fundamental rewiring at the heart of a story. Barnard Theatre’s interpretation of “Wolf Play” brought it to life in a unique way, taking it well beyond the words on the page and leaving the audience with an increased sensitivity to the powers of production.