Plays, musicals and other shows often deal with the grief of losing family members, but few take that grief and place it into the world of “Dungeons and Dragons.”
One of these few shows, “She Kills Monsters,” will be hosted at Wichita State in the first week of May.
“She Kills Monsters” follows Agnes Evans as she deals with the loss of her parents and little sister Tilly in a car accident. In her grief, Agnes realizes she wasn’t as close to Tilly as she wanted to be and embarks on an adventure to get to know her sister through playing a DND module Tilly had written.
“We learn about her (Tilly’s) sexuality and the way she viewed the world, and the things that she was going through right before she died,” said Amanda Schmalzried, a senior studying theatre and one of the show’s directors. “In the end, it’s just all about recovering from that grief and finding closure through the game.”
Both Schmalzried and the other director, Trevor Andreasen, a junior studying theatre, wanted to delve deeper into the themes that were present inside Tilly’s DND world.
“How fragile a lot of tolerance and acceptance can be in America right now, and how things are getting torn away,” Andreasen said. “I know I wanted to be a part of the show so that we could give to the community something that shows with great confidence and pride a great celebration of the self-expression that we all have that seems some people want to take away.”
Schmalzried shared a similar expression about coming to direct the show, and mentioned a quote by Dan Savage from the height of the AIDS epidemic: “… We buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night.”
“So much of my experience around the political sphere right now is around those two first things (of the quote), and so for me this is really the first time in my life where I’m like, ‘Let’s just embrace queer joy, even though times are hard right now and it’s scary … the way I’ve been processing the show as a human, and then how that interprets my direction is so much about queer joy,” Schmalzried said.
The show uses a heightened reality to show the role-playing aspect of DND, and Schmalzried and Andreasen used staging and other effects to show Agnes being pulled into the world and away from it stylistically.
“I think from the audience’s perspective they’re meant to forget that at times, they’re meant to forget as they get transitioned into the DND world, and then she gets pulled back out, and you’re like ‘Oh, wait, everything that happened in this entire play is happening at this table,’” Schmalzried said. “It’s only in their heads and their imagination as DND is, but that gets to be played out on stage, which is so fun.”
The show is directed and run by students, autonomous from staff and faculty, funding has come from previous performances in the Empty Space Theatre and the slow accumulation of a budget over time.
“There’s something really powerful about that shared experience of taking action and taking a risk and getting involved with projects that your peers are doing,” Andreasen said.
The show will be held in the Welsbacher Theatre at WSU’s Metropolitan Complex from May 1 to 3 at 7:30 p.m.
“If people really love DND, if they really love campy, cunty, queer joy, come check it out because that’s what it is,” Schmalzried said. “It gets real at times, but also it’s fun, it’s so much fun.”
