UK Theatre dives into D&D and the ’90s with ‘She Kills Monsters’

Sloan Gilbert describes the University of Kentucky Department of Theatre and Dance’s current production, which she stars in, as “a journey and a moving-on, and a sort of healing process.”

That’s an interesting way to describe a play centered on the role-playing-game Dungeons & Dragons and loaded with fight scenes and adrenaline fueled 1990s rock by Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine.

Qui Nguyen’s “She Kills Monsters,” is described by fight coordinator Andrew Dylan Ray as “a love letter to nerd culture.”

The play centers on Gilbert’s character, Agnes, an Athens, Ohio, woman in her early 20s still reeling from the loss of her entire family, including her younger sister, in a car crash.

Tilly was six years younger than Agnes, and they didn’t have a very strong relationship. So in an effort to get to know her little sister better, Agnes takes Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook to the proprietor of a role-playing game shop. There, Agnes discovers that her sister, who was 15, was a master D&D player, and that the best way for Agnes to get to know Tilly is to play the game.

That brings to life Tilly and the bizarre cast of characters she created, including sidekicks and a myriad of lethal monsters.

For Agnes, it’s a deep dive into self-discovery. For the cast of the play, it has been a deep dive into mid-’90s and gaming culture.

“A lot of us, going into it, had no idea what D&D was, and what it entailed,” says Madeline Williamson, who plays Sloan’s best friend, Vera. “We had one rehearsal what was four hours of just playing Dungeons & Dragons, and we barely made a dent in the story.”

Dungeons & Dragons emerged in the 1970s as the prototype role-playing game in which players are assigned specific roles and went on adventures overseen by a dungeon master, who acts as a storyteller and referee. Whereas similar sorts of computer games and video games have become pop culture phenomenons, D&D usually had more modest groups of adherents.

“I remember playing it with my friends, and I loved playing it, though I didn’t get into it as much as other people,” says director Matthew Schneck, a visiting assistant professor of theater at UK. “It’s still alive and well.”

Williamson says, “A lot of us didn’t realize how theatrical it was. Your dungeon master, in particular, has to take on a ton of roles and lay out the story visually.”

Says Gilbert: “The thought process you have to have, and the creativity, absolutely mirrors theater.”

The show is set in the era right before the Internet became ubiquitous, and it has moments that include a character bragging about his 56K modem, a painfully slow connection in the broadband era.

In addition to costumes, the major element in creating the D&D world was stage combat, which Ray says put the student actors to the test of safely staging difficult fights with real weapons including swords, battle axes and whips.

“We wanted to draw the audience in and have the fights seem real,” Ray says. “Everything you see in this is wood or solid steel. It’s the real deal as far as the fights go.

“I wanted it to be fun, but I also wanted the audience to understand that when people die, they die. It’s important for the play because some of these characters don’t make it.”

After all, this is a story of healing and growth, even if it also happens to be a rip-roaring time and a cultural trip.

This story was originally published October 26, 2016 at 5:57 PM with the headline "UK Theatre dives into D&D and the ’90s with ‘She Kills Monsters’."