Meme Resnick’s interest in Dungeons & Dragons started when she transferred to a new high school in her junior year.  A friend suggested that she might like to learn about the popular role-playing game.

“He was putting together a group and asked me if I wanted to play, and I thought, 'I’m new at this school, and this will help me meet some new people,'” she said. “I like to play different characters and play different story lines and see what they are like.”

In addition to Dungeons & Dragons, Resnick was also interested in theater.

Theater and D&D role-playing came magically together in Qui Nguyen’s play She Kills Monsters, which the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre will present March 12-15 at the Arthur Miller Theatre, with Resnick directing.

“It must have been 2011 or 2012, my sister saw the touring company in Boston and told me about it,” Resnick said. “At that point, I had been playing Dungeons & Dragons in some form or another for five or six years. So that someone had come out with a show with D&D, I went through hoops to get a copy of the script.”

She Kills Monsters begins with a prologue. Agnes Evans’ younger sister, Tilly, and other family members were killed in a car accident.  The years passed, and Agnes is still grieving for a sister she never really got to know. She knew about her sister’s love of D&D, and Agnes thought she'd look into it.

“One of the lines in the play that’s really powerful from Agnes is, ‘I remember my sister when she was a little kid toddling after me, and I don’t remember when she was a preteen and teenager,'” Resnick said. “Tilly was into Dungeons and Dragons, and Agnes was not. There is an age gap between the sisters, six years apart.”

Sierra Chapin-Keller plays Agnes.

“I think when we meet her, she’s stuck in her life in a small town. She feels life is boring, and overnight, things change when her whole family dies in a car crash, and she becomes stuck in a different life and stuck in her grief,” Chapin-Keller said

Agnes discovers D&D and a game module that was created by her sister. Chapin-Keller was also drawn to D&D.

“I kind of understand Agnes, and she is surprised about a lot of the things she finds in the module. She was so caught up in her life as a college student and as a friend than as a big sister, she just didn’t pay attention to her younger sister, and I think being motivated by the game gives her a new perspective on herself and her sister. It’s healing,” Chapin-Keller said.

A narrator makes it clear that Tilly is dead. But her spirit continues.

Maddie Esselink plays Tilly.

“First of all, I love Tilly, she’s who I was when I was growing up and who I am now. She’s a total geek,” Esselink said. “I feel she’s a bit of an outcast in reality, but I think she also feels like an outcast. And I feel that’s why she escapes to D&D and writes these complex modules for characters who were people in her lifetime. People she likes and people she doesn’t like. She gets to work out this fantasy, and she’s super-powerful and super-respected."

Resnick takes a different approach to staging She Kills Monsters.

“When people do She Kills Monsters, they go all in for the costuming, props, and scenery, and they try to make it very realistic and life-like, which is great if you have the budget. So I wanted to do something different,” Resnick said.

Instead of steel swords and other weapons, the gear will be made of duct tape and foam. The costumes are simple, and there is not much difference between fantasy characters and real characters.

Joshua Coslar is the fight choreographer.

“This show has become a hallmark for an up-and-coming fight director,” Coslar said. “It’s got a lot of fights in it, a lot of mixed weapons. A lot of fight directors, certified teachers, do [the play] 10 or 12 times during a career. Oftentimes, the D&D magical sections are done with steel and aluminum weapons and seem very gritty and Game of Thrones, very realistic—and you’ll notice we have duct tape. It’s been a lot of fun,” Coslar said. “It’s been cool to look at this as whimsical, taking inspiration from clowns and interpretive dance, and explore the sillier side of this kind of combat. What we really focused on aesthetically was taking this silly-looking set of weapons and using them confidently and efficiently.”

“Agnes is a complete newbie to the game; she doesn’t get it,” said Resnick. "She’s playing herself very much because the point for her is, ‘Why did Tilly like this game?' And either she doesn’t know she can figure it out in another way, or she doesn’t want to figure it out in another way. She plays herself, and what helps her figure out Tilly is just playing the game as herself.”

While dealing with complex emotions, She Kills Monsters is also about having fun.

“I’m very emotionally attached to my sword, and I’m going to steal it,” Esselink joked. “I’m gunning for it.  I named the sword Strange Fire. I’m having so much fun, and I think everybody is passionate about this play and everybody is respectful of it.”

Sierra Chapin-Keller said the play is true to D&D.

“It’s funny, and it’s touching,” she said. “It’s hard to pick a favorite moment in particular. Overall, what I like is that it’s really true to D&D, and when you play with a group of people, you get to know them well.“

That's because Resnick’s interpretation of Nguyen’s play is about narrative control and identity, which is as integral to D&D as to who is telling the story.

“So, who is telling the story, whose story is it, and then who are you? Because one of the key components of this is a level of queerness to a lot of the characters,” Resnick said. “That plays into D&D. You have a lot of players who will play a gender they aren’t, a sexual orientation they’re not, obviously a species you want to play, an elf or an orc.”

Resnick said she hopes the audience will be entertained but also learn something.

“I hope someone who has never played Dungeons & Dragons will be more open to it," she said, "not necessarily to play it, though that would be great."

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.    

The Ann Arbor Civic Theatre presents Qui Nguyen’s play “She Kills Monsters” at 7:30 pm on March 12-14 and at 2 pm on March 15 at the Arthur Miller Theatre, 1226 Murfin Avenue, Ann Arbor. For tickets and more info, visit a2ct.org.