She Kills Monsters
By Qui Nguyen
Photos by Rebecca Shrom and Alex Herstik
Following Player King, I wanted to do a full-length play with a real ‘Spectacle’ quality to it. I felt the need to challenge myself and to a work that wasn’t purely about the propulsive nature of language; a work that required more imagination and invention. Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters is the story of a woman trying to rediscover her deceased sister through the latter’s Dungeons & Dragons habit, and embarking on an imaginary journey into the tabletop fantasy game-world. Our charge with the concept was to create a world both real in its implications and able to embrace its inner fictional nature at the same time.
I felt strongly that all the monsters, demons, and dragons should have a feeling of being not-quite finished, still in flux, still somewhat sketches on graph paper. I wanted the production to be a journey we invited our audience to take with us—and one in which we trusted them to fill in the blanks with their own minds.
Production Team:
Director/ Set Designer: Ryan Stevens
Choreographer: Grace Ann Roberts
Costume Designer: Rebecca Shrom & Susanna McElveen
Lighting Designer: Megan Branham
Fight Choreographer: Jon Whit McClinton
Production Stage Manager: Kira Neighbors
Sound Designer: Jordan Young