POCATELLO — Preparing for a play about empowered girls, female Idaho State University theater students are being empowered by women who have been essential, encouraging and supportive.

The ISU cast is receiving extensive tutelage on how to portray its characters in a play about soccer players by none other than the ISU women’s soccer team, which is teaching them how to play the sport.

“I’ve just been astonished at the generosity that they have extended to us,” said Vanessa Ballam, the play’s director and ISU associate professor of theatre. “In hindsight, I can’t imagine doing the show without their help because there’s just so many details that they know inherently.”

The name of the soccer-centric play is “The Wolves,” which focuses on an elite high school girls soccer team during warmups before each of its games. That is when meaningful conversations occur between the teammates, who have been together for most of their lives.

“It’s really about existing in a pack as fierce young females on their own turf, or battlefield, if you may,” Ballam said. “One of the things that is really exciting to me is that these girls exist as their own beings, not as eye candy or in relationship to a man. But you get to see high school girls in their natural habitat, if you will.”

The drama was first performed in 2016 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It was written by a woman — Sarah DeLappe — just like every other play performed by ISU students this school year, because the ISU Department of Theatre and Dance decided to celebrate female playwrights and composers.

It will be the fifth and final production of the 2019-20 school year by the ISU School of Performing Arts. The five 7:30 p.m. showings across April 17-18 and 23-25 for “The Wolves” will be at the Stephens Performing Arts Center on a stage lined with turf.

The cast begins rehearsals in March, but just completed their fourth of six planned 2-hour sessions at Reed Gym’s basketball court with the ISU soccer team. In the fall, Ballam presented the idea to Bengals head soccer coach Debs Brereton and it was welcomed wholeheartedly.

The soccer squad has rolled out balls before putting the actresses through stretching, conditioning, soccer drills and sometimes a scrimmage to conclude the session.

This is not the first time Brereton has helped theater students for “The Wolves,” as she provided assistance when she was Ohio University’s associate head soccer coach. Ballam said Brereton has also given them a workout regimen for outside of the sessions and is open to cast members reaching out to her.

“It really isn’t every day where the theater and the athletics kind of collide to one place,” Brereton said. “So I thought it was a wonderful opportunity for our players to give back to the game through a very different avenue than what is normal and teaching women their own age who have got a really different type of talent.”

Ballam, who also participates in the soccer sessions, has directed around 10 plays in eight years at ISU and never had help from an ISU sports team.

She researched soccer for the sake of authenticity of the play. But she had not kicked a soccer ball since elementary school, and 11 of her 13 actresses have never committed to play soccer, which gave Ballam pause.

Ballam said you must know the rules of the game to successfully act, a lesson that usually just has metaphorical meaning.

“Everything we teach in our acting classes comes from this idea of conscious work of trying to break down the script and the character and time period and any of the circumstances of the play,” Ballam said. “With this particular play, a major, major component is soccer and that’s the lingo these girls speak, that’s the rules of engagement that they have in their lives, that’s something that’s been ingrained in them from a very, very young age.”

ISU junior Teegan Schriock is one of the only actresses who knows all about that, playing soccer for 10 years until she tore her ACL in her sophomore high school season.

“This play has given me the opportunity to put soccer and theater — the two things I love most in the world — together, so I don’t know what could be better,” said Schriock, a Skyline High School graduate who helped with actress callbacks by testing their passing and possessing skills for Ballam.

While Schriock knew her way around the soccer field, freshman cast member Laney Bell does not as she hasn’t played the sport since she was around 6 years old.

Bell is grateful that the ISU soccer team has been supportive and patient.

“I was really nervous that the soccer team was going to not be kind to these dorky theater students who are just trying to learn from them,” said Bell, a Centennial High School graduate. “The whole team has been there to help us and has been really great and supportive. They treat us like we’re on their own team, so it’s been really nice.”

It’s women helping women.

“A lot of what this show is, is about female empowerment and females supporting females,” Bell said. “So I think that says a lot that we’re able to merge these two worlds of theater and athletics and just support each other as women supporting women, and it’s not like one versus the other. We just combine and it’s just been really awesome to just be in a female-supportive environment.”