Director Madeline Sayet knows something about rolling the dice and seeing which paths open up.
“So I originally was supposed to be in London now, working on my PhD,” she says during a recent phone interview. “But this was such a fun script – a fantasy adventure with female protagonists – that I thought ‘I should make time for this.’
The play that caught her fancy was “She Kills Monsters,” a layered comedy/drama by Qui Nguyen that features “Dungeons and Dragons” role-playing games, fantasy creatures and great emotional depth. Connecticut Repertory Theatre enlisted Sayet, an internationally known theater and opera director, to helm the multifaceted play, which runs March 22 to 31.
“I work on a lot of projects where there is magic, but not where we literally go to a world to slay dragons,” she says, laughing. The show is performed by students in the BFA acting program at the University of Connecticut — at least the human roles.
Another alluring aspect of “She Kills Monsters” for Sayet was the chance to work with students from UConn’s Puppet Arts program. As a teenager growing up in Connecticut, Sayet worked with the New London-based Flock Theatre company, a multidisciplinary troupe that regularly assisted the artists at the annual National Puppetry Conferences held at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford.
The “She Kills Monsters” puppets are constructed and operated by the puppetry students. The designer is Zach Broome, who designed the fairy-tale puppets for CT Rep’s production of the musical “Shrek” last year.
“We talked months ago about what was needed,” Sayet says. “Designing and constructing them is a long process. The way this production is done, there are five puppeteers. One of them doubles as a voice character that isn’t always a puppet.”
The show features a variety of puppet styles.
“The first puppets you see are shadow puppets. Then the puppet elements grow and expand as we get more fully immersed in the story. It’s one of the bigger time-consuming elements.”
The 90-minute play has sword fights and “a dance battle,” the director, says. “We also have really cool dragons.”
But the play, which has been getting a lot of small-theater and college productions around the country, is grounded in dark psychological elements. “She Kills Monsters” concerns a young woman named Agnes (played at CT Rep by Vivienne James) coping with grief and loss following the death of her sister Tilly (Alexandra Brokowski). Agnes discovers Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons manuals, and enters a fantasy world. There are 11 actors in the show, which features such characters as Farrah the Faerie (Noel Williams) and Evil Gabbi (Lily Ling).
“One of the things I love about this show,” Sayet says, “is that it’s an action/adventure/comedy, but it sneaks up on you, and you’re like ‘Why am I crying?’”
Playwright Qui Nguyen got a lot of attention in 2016 for his quasi-biographical, comic-book styled play “Vietgone,” a loose retelling of the story of how his parents met during the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. “Vietgone” won a couple of prestigious new-play awards and had a major New York production by Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. Nguyen, whose website describes him as “playwright, screenwriter, geek,” has carved out a special theatrical niche for himself with action-packed, social-issue-infused plays such as “Alice in Slasherland,” “The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G,” and the Shakespearean zombie comedy “Living Dead in Denmark.” Most of his plays were originally written for the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, which Nguyen co-founded at Ohio University in 2000 and which has been based in New York since 2002. Nguyen’s TV work includes the SYFY channel series “Incorporated.”
Sayet responds to the raw theatricality of Nguyen’s colorful, adventurous work. The puppets and swords and fights in “She Kills Monsters” can be intense, but the show’s scenic design is “super minimal,” Sayet says. The show is being staged in CT Rep’s Studio Theatre.
“It’s this small space, with this five-headed dragon. Every time the dragon comes out in rehearsal, someone screams and runs around.”
SHE KILLS MONSTERS by Qui Nguyen, directed by Madeline Sayet, plays March 22 to 31 at Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s Studio Theatre, 802 Bolton Road, on the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $33, $28 for seniors and $10 for students. 860-486-2113 and crt.uconn.edu.
