About a week ago, I read Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters, written in 2011 and first performed Off Off
Broadway by the Flea Theatre on November 4, 2011. Interestingly enough, the play opened yesterday at
the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre as a part of its “Garage Rep Season.” Qui Nguyen himself is a Vietnamese-American
playwright perhaps most famous for his early collaboration, Vampire Cowboy Trilogy, with Robert Ross
Parker, with whom he founded the Vampire Cowboy Theatre Company. One can buy She Kills Monsters from amazon.com or from samuelfrench.com.
She Kills Monsters is
the story of Agnes Evans, a twenty-something-year-old teacher who wants to
learn more about her deceased teenage sister, Tilly, who died in a horrific car
crash along with the rest of Agnes’ family.
Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons and
Dragons adventure module and looks to play with Tilly’s former dungeon
master. The scenes alternate between the
highly fantastical world of Tilly’s adventure, which include DnD-ized versions
of Tilly’s friends, and the real world, where Agnes actually meets these
people. In the DnD world, Agnes and the
party must team up to defeat three evil bosses and the dragon, Tiamat; the
three bosses are comprised of the villains of Tilly’s life, such as the bully
cheerleaders and Agnes’ boyfriend. Through
the game, Agnes learns that Tilly was a lesbian who had a crush on the
real-life basis for one of the party members, Lilly, who did not know how to
accept Tilly’s affections. Eventually,
Agnes slays the Tiamat, and the play ends with the narration that Agnes, her
boyfriend, and Tilly’s old DnD friends would continue to have adventures every
week, but they would never forget Tilly.
My favorite dramaturgical choice for this script is that
Tilly’s sexual orientation is not referenced until page 36 of the 70-page
script. It may come across as a sort of “suddenly,
here’s the moral!” addition, but the script is built this way for a
reason. It lulls the reader into
thinking that the play is just a silly comedic fantasy, but halfway through the
play, two evil succubi (cheerleaders) call Agnes’ dead sister a dyke, which is
obviously quite shocking to her. This
structure actually mimics the experience of DnD nerds; the fun, awesome fantasy
world is an escape from a cold, mean reality that does not understand. She
Kills Monsters is not aiming to be just Lord
of the Rings-style DnD-session escapism; it treads the line between reality
and fantasy to show both. This structure
of harsh bits of reality covered by a blanket of silliness is actually used
early on in the play, as well, which opens with a Cate Blanchett-esque narrator
making nerd jokes who cursorily adds “And so the Gods answered her wish by
smiting down every single one of her loved ones in a single car crash. But this isn’t the story of that tragedy.”
In that same vein, I like that Qui Nguyen did not write this
story about the car crash or Tilly’s death.
In the play, there is not even a mention of Tilly’s and Agnes’ parents
or whoever else would be one of her loved ones in the car crash. Despite this, the play is very much about the
Evans sisters and their relationship before Tilly’s death, so the action of the
play is not just an isolated incident of unrelated fantasy. I think the play does itself a favor by not
bogging itself down in the details of the tragedy, though.
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