She Kills Monsters Play Analysis

The scene I would like to focus on occurs at the beginning of the play as the two main protagonists are being introduced. Agnes, a 22-year-old designated university graduate and designated high school teacher delivers an accurate verbal reflection of herself to the audience by listening to pop-music, which gives her an ordinary and, at the same time, contemporary demeanor. Contrasting her personally and even visually, through standing in front of a canvas that supports the appearance of both by shadow pantomime, is Tilly who is basically obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy table-top role playing game that assigns each player a specific character (in Tilly’s case, Tillius the Paladin) embarking upon fantastic adventures. The depiction

That included the Woman’s Marches at the beginning of last year and the ongoing #metoo and #timesup movements that have been revealing grave misbehaviour toward women in various areas of society. Thus, in the wake of recent events, She Kills Monsters is a timely production emphasizing female empowerment, tolerance and social adversity and diversity focused on by the number of fight-scenes and the depiction of Tilly’s partially romantic relationship with Lillith. Furthermore, it deals with the philosophical perception of life through two initially antagonist lifestyles that are coined by both missing excitement and escapism. After the death of Tilly, Agnes starts to acknowledge the fact that she failed to strive familiarizing with Tilly and her affection for D&D. Simultaneously, she is disappointed at Miles for taking their relationship slow by not having already asked her to move in with him or even proposing to her. Thus, finding Tilly’s notebook containing a innovative game-plan designed by Tilly is appreciated by Agnes and considered to be a diversion from her lethargic daily life and, first and foremost, an opportunity to develop a better understanding for Tilly’s favourite game. For Tilly, on the other hand, D&D provides

An omnipresent element of the scene are the D&D dice-replicates that are to be found all across the stage and throughout the play. These are meant to resolve random events during the game and are essential to game mechanics. The presence of such underline the omnipresence of the game, even in a moment which seems casual and daily and where there is no hint given about the run of future events. However, in that scene particularly, the importance of the D&D world, its very dominance over actual reality almost, is emphasized for the first time. Ironically contrasting to that, with a canvas to push the narrative of the argument between Agnes and Tilly, reality presents itself to the audience as contrived and fabricated. Predominantly the end of the scene, when the simulant shadow pantomime projects the fatal car-accident on the canvas, appears without integrity but consequently merges with the D&D world when the canvas displays the silhouette of a dragon flying over the crash-site, indicating the take-over of the play by D&D and Tilly’s alter ego. This is simultaneously an analogy for the societal critique mentioned above, concerning the role of women in society. On the on hand the reality “on a canvas” constituting itself through legal equality with no applicable value, on the other hand an anticipated alternative, which