“Did you have fun?
That’s the point in all this.”
- Tilly Evans
Growing up can be a limited existence through which the notion of fun is reduced to weekends only. Even then, those experiences can seem fleeting and forgettable. Aging, for many of us, means becoming more serious and less childlike. The fear of the judgment of peers and authorities can lead “adults” to censor themselves in ways that reflect an embrace of Theatre of the Oppressed creator Augusto Boal’s “Cop In the Head”—an omniscient authoritarian in all of us that tells us to be cautious about what we say, how we say it, and to whom we say it. In my experience as an educator in higher education, young people become conditioned to transition into perfectionistic, sterile displays of adulthood reproduced by prior generations.
But what is life without play? Without fun? Without the freedom and opportunity to fight for those people and ideas we believe in most?
In Qui Nguyen’s fantasy dramedy, She Kills Monsters, Agnes—a 20-something high school teacher—forces herself to confront the tragic loss of her kid sister, Tilly, in the only way she can—by playing her sister’s favorite game, Dungeons & Dragons—a role-playing game that has invigorated players since 1974.
Set in Athens, Ohio in 1995, this intergenerational play is filled with action, love, grief, and more than its share of nineties references and laugh-out-loud moments. Nguyen’s popular play is an homage to fun, freedom, friendship, and sisterhood. To say goodbye to Tilly properly, Agnes must get to know her better by playing a game that takes her on the journey of a lifetime. In doing so, she finds a family of friends who could only have been imagined in her sister’s wildest dreams.
- Kristyl D. Tift