In ‘She Kills Monsters,’ Acton Players explore grief, identity, fantasy
Weird and sinister creatures will come to life in the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired performance opening November 7.
A one-eyed fiend and a fierce five-headed dragon.
A demon overlord of the underworld.
A gelatinous, flesh-eating cube.
If you are into Dungeons & Dragons, the wildly popular tabletop and video game, these figures will be familiar. They, and many other weird and sinister creatures, are coming to life on the Acton Players stage for a production of “She Kills Monsters” opening November 7.
D&D is a fantasy role-playing game with a huge following of dedicated players. It allows each player to create their own character and join others to embark on adventures.
“She Kills Monsters” presents a totally average young woman, Agnes Evans, who loses her teenage sister, Tilly, in a car crash. When Agnes discovers her sister’s notebook, it opens a door into the magical world that her sister, a bullied high schooler, had used as an escape.
Agnes embarks on a quest to save her sister’s soul, battling murderous monsters and her own dragons along the way.
A ‘daring show’
The play explores themes about grief, identity, and the power of fantasy. It also examines the ideas of acceptance and belonging, sexuality, and the challenges of navigating adolescence, according to its director, Quinton Kappel.
Kappel, a Weston native who lives in Somerville, says “She Kills Monsters” is a “daring show for community theater. While it’s about love and accepting others and being your authentic self, it also celebrates adventure, imagination, and the courage to imagine the kind of world you want to be part of.”
A multimedia visual artist, video editor, and independent filmmaker, Kappel earned a bachelor of fine arts in film and animation at Tufts University and a bachelor’s degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in film, cinema, and video studies.
He serves as a multimedia content creator for Tufts University School of Medicine. An actor “since I was a kid,” Kappel played the title role in the Players’ production of “Shakespeare in Love” this year.
His biggest challenge, Kappel says, has been “wrangling the chaos, as the play has many moving parts every single moment, including sound, lights, fight choreography, and dance choreography. I need it to look chaotic but be safe.”
His cast, he notes, is “an embarrassment of riches” — 16 actors whose average age is mid-20s and all of whom “are familiar with, if not deeply passionate about, D&D.” Kappel promises the production will “knock your socks off” and be “one of the most fun shows you’ll ever see.”
Gauntlets and tassets
“She Kills Monsters” is particularly challenging for its set and costume designers. Christina Zannieri of Acton fills the latter role, and her goal is to “not mess with the story.” If the skin of a monster is green, she notes, “it had better be green.”
A former midwife, Zannieri says she “wanted to do something different that would challenge me.” But costume work has turned out to be similar, at least in one aspect, to her previous career. “I’m birthing something wonderful here, too,” she says.
A visit to the costume room below the stage reveals that Zannieri has a flock of helpers, among them Darlene Fladager of Littleton, the team’s armorer. That night, as a rehearsal ran upstairs, Fladager sat at a counter fashioning pauldrons (shoulder armor), bracers (forearm guards), gauntlets (hand armor), tassets (thigh armor), and demi-curlass (chest armor) from leather and fur.
Fladager’s husband, Larry Griffin, is among those building the complicated set that involves a turntable and several nasty creatures constructed from wood, papier-mâché, rubber, and foam. Kappel designed some of the creatures, but those are, along with the costumes, he says, a closely guarded secret to preserve the element of surprise for audiences.
Other Players productions this season will be “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (February 13-28) and “Brigadoon” (April 24-May 9).
“She Kills Monsters” runs November 7-22 at 51 Walden Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $24. For tickets and details, visit concordplayers.org.
