A Call to Bold Vulnerability
What started as a Magical Mess is taking shape, and I wanted to share my thoughts about this production. What follows is my Director’s Note , which will be featured in the She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms programs soon.
Communal creative play constructs alternative realities where the exploration of both imaginary worlds and real selves takes place. Tabletop roleplaying games are more than exploring dungeons and fighting dragons; collaboratively crafted narratives emerge from players’ shared imagining and rolls of the dice. In that exploration, we can connect, learning about ourselves and one another.
She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms starts with one death and ends with another. Initially, Agnes prizes her ability to excel in meeting societal expectations—her averageness. A year after the death of her sister Tilly, through D&D, Agnes learns to appreciate Tilly’s full self; but in the process, Agnes realizes that she must slay more than monsters. She must defend those that don’t conform to her high school’s social norms, and to do so, she must allow her dedication to being ‘average’ to die, as well.
In a time where social media activism without supporting, real-life action is rampant, She Kills Monsters asks us to step out of our comfort zones and see others as whole, interesting, valuable human beings worth fighting for. Agnes had been blind to her sister’s identity, remaining comfortably detached and assuming that Tilly would “grow out of all this—that I’d be able to sit around and ask her about normal things like clothes and TV shows and boys.” But while comfortably enjoying her averageness, Agnes remained ignorant of the monsters Tilly was fighting in the real world.
Once Agnes discovers the horrific homophobia Tilly faced in life, Agnes struggles to resist the same homophobic urges within herself. She allows a new quest to become more important than recovering the lost Soul of Athens; she pursues instead the knowledge of Tilly’s sexuality. While Agnes obsesses over Tilly’s queerness, she loses sight of saving her sister’s soul.
We, too, run this risk. While we exist in a world that demands to know—and judge—the details of others’ sexualities and gender identities, we find ourselves trapped in a social narrative that steals souls from anyone who doesn’t fit in with the cultural definition of “average”. Currently, those living within the US who don’t fit this definition continue to be judged, isolated, their souls held captive by the terrifying dragon of social norms with its five heads—whiteness, straightness, cis-ness, masculinity, and Christianity. Our cast is comprised of individuals who refute this definition, and we speak through Chuck as he admonishes Agnes, interrupting her obsessed frenzy to find out her sister’s sexuality by telling her that “it’s not part of the adventure.” We ask our audience, similarly, to focus on the real-world adventure—on living fully and finding connection, freeing those around us to be seen and celebrated for who they are, rather than defining others by isolated facets of their identities.
Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters is a warning that if we enforce our definitions of normalcy on others, we risk losing the opportunity to find connection. Like Agnes, we shouldn’t risk our abilities to connect by ignoring the souls of others to focus instead on facets of their identities that don’t match our own. Like Agnes, we shouldn’t cling to the comfort of inaction, remaining emotionally detached while hoping that things will change. Instead, we must discover the courage to connect with one another, fight alongside one another, and appreciate others as they are, instead of how we want them to be.
This specific production of She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms issues a call to bold vulnerability—to the brave and intimate action of accepting others as they are and opening ourselves up to the discomfort of being seen as we are. Therefore, for this production our directing team worked to craft a new language of intimacy and vulnerability, utilizing the framing of Zoom to do so.
In real-life virtual realms, we often monitor how we are seen through Zoom, staring at ourselves in that second box to curate how others see us, just as we curate our appearances and our public personas online and in real life. Eye contact and camera proximity, then, become expressions of openness to connection within this production. When we make eye contact, we pause our self-curation for a brief moment, allowing ourselves to be seen as we are. When these characters look into the camera, they are reaching out, inviting contact while dropping their self-monitoring shields. Looking into the camera prioritizes connection over self-curation, inviting others to see into, and potentially free, our souls. Our directing team, along with the entire company of this production, invites you into our Virtual Realm, and we ask you to question the value of averageness with Agnes, to learn to see and be seen, and to consider bold vulnerability in your own adventures.
