Minor Spoilers Ahead
To 7-year-old Renee Young, the dimly lit dingy waiting room of the guitar studio was not a place she would zone out with boredom while her older sister banged away on a drum set in a practice space.
Young did not see the cramped prison-like walls, or the janky school desks strewn about; she saw a stage.
On that stage, she put on a play for an attentive audience of one. After dancing around in her own world pretending to be Cinderella, Renee’s mother would applaud the performance that only existed in that moment.
“I have always been playing pretend,” Young said.
Young, a fourth-year theater and media performance major with a minor in communications studies, plays Agnes Evans, the lead role of “She Kills Monsters.” The Stevenson theater program’s upcoming show will give audience members the chance to believe in the moment of magic found in imagination.
Interim Department chair of communication and program coordinator for theater and media performance, Ryan Clark, expressed that theater is a shared experience between actor and audience.
“I love the idea that you can create this piece of art, that exists in a moment on the stage where the actor and the audience are sharing the same oxygen for an hour and a half and then it’s done and it is never to be created again,” Clark said. “That is so magical to me.”
Since the beginning of the semester, Katie Solomon, adjunct professor at Stevenson, and professional director, has been casting spells to make sure that the show is filled with whimsy. Solomon remarked that theater, like playing pretend, is dictated by the actor’s imagination.
“You’re never the same actor coming to the part every day,” Solomon said. “That’s why theater exists, it’s not a movie, it exists in this moment, and it goes away.”
Solomon has always seen herself as a director. She used to imagine herself as a composed, headscarf-wearing madam, swaddled in a shawl, smoking a long cigarette while comfortably planted in a chair.
During the rehearsals for “She Kills Monsters”, Solomon would run circles around the Cruella de Vil version of herself.
While the prompter juggles putting syrup on their pancakes and double checking the script for the actors swinging around swords on stage, Solomon tests the comfort level of each chair in the auditorium.
“You can’t get me to sit down,” Soloman said.
Whether Soloman observes from the front row, leaning up against the stage as if she is ordering a drink from a bar or pacing up and down the center aisle, her motivation is always the same. She wants every audience member to have the best seat in the house.
There are two stages required for “She Kills Monsters.” One stage is large enough to hold a gelatinous green blob and a five-headed fire breathing dragon. The other stage is a table only big enough for the hooded figure to silently roll dice on.
Joshua Brown, a fourth-year environmental science major with a minor in theater and media performance, plays Chuck Biggs, a playfully nerdy dungeon master.
Brown has been preparing for this role since he was in 9th grade running and writing D&D games for his high school friends.
“We’re just doing what we did as kids,” Brown said. “We’re just pretending to be a character and pretending to fight with fake wooden or metal swords and live out a fun little fantasy for a bit.”
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As a child, every couch cushion is a castle wall, every trash can lid is a shield and every stick in the woods is a sword.
If a director needs just one actor slapped or a captivating sword dual, they call freelancing Fight Choreographer Mel Gabel.
“She Kills Monsters” is a physical combat heavy show, and it is Gabel’s job to ensure that each sword stab and elbow jab is done safely. Gabel knows how a fight is supposed to look. To her, it is supposed to look like a dance.
“In musicals, characters start singing because they have so much emotion, they don’t know what to do with it so they can’t help but to sing,” Gabel said. “In this they have so much emotion that they can’t help but to fight.”
Young expressed that being on the stage and fighting her friends with swords makes her feel like a kid again.
“You don’t normally do stuff like this in real life,” Young said. “You don’t get to swing around a sword and if you do, you’re going to look crazy.”
The sound of steel rings out in the empty theater. Andrew Parker and Young fight with prop swords; a sword fight ripped from a fantasy world between a monster and a hero.
As Gabel guides the actors through the rhythmic steps of a fight; she looks for the passion that children have when playing with sticks. Young has never done stage combat before. However, she held a stick when she was a kid.
“We’re building this fantasy world, and a lot of people read fantasy books, so they are accustomed to what a fight is supposed to look like,” Gabel said.
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As an adult, every deadline is another gray hair, every failed relationship is another broken heart, and every workweek feels endless.
“The play acknowledges wish fulfillment and we really get to live these sorts of dreams and stories that we don’t get to everyday,” Brown said. “I think that’s something people sort of forget as we get older and playing pretend with our friend’s kind of goes away.”
The characters are not real, but the problems they face are. “She Kills Monsters” is not just about swinging a heavy sword around; it is about loss, connections, and self-discovery.
The show follows Agnes Evan’s walk through grief after her younger sister and her parents die in a car crash. Solomon explained that the most influential aspect of the narrative is that it focuses solely on the siblings’ relationship.
“I suppose we always know our parents are going to go before us,” Solomon said. “But we never think about our sibling going before us so young.”
At one point in time, Solomon and her younger sister lived in the same house. Now, they do not even live in the same state.
“When you’re young, you just go down the stairs and find them and you watch tv or whatever it is,” Solomon said. “That goes away when you get older.”
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As an audience member viewing “She Kills Monsters”, every prop sword is sharp, every flashing light is a spell, and every wooden dragon head breathes fire.
Fourth-year student, Hannah Sobieck, a film and moving image major with a minor in theater and graphic design, plays the lead role’s deceased sister, Tilly Evans. Playing pretend on stage is where Sobieck finds joy and purpose.
“My community is through film and movies and theater,” Sobieck said. “When I am expressing myself through art that’s where I find my truest self.”
Theater is a shared experience where the actors find purpose while the audience finds an escape from reality.
Nic Mitchell, a fourth-year theater and media performance major, who plays the supporting role of Vera, believes that the whimsical tone is what the show is all about. They want audience members to feel the magic.
“Theater is cathartic,” Mitchell said. “It’s all about sitting in a seat for an hour and a half and not thinking about the 500 homework assignments you have . . . and witnessing something happen on stage that hasn’t happened before.”
Solomon expressed that although life can feel dark sometimes, there is some light that shines out to audience members in the form of heroes that are brave enough to fight dragons.
“I want them to come in, sit down and literally be just ripped from their reality and thrown into this world for 90 minutes and then they go back to the real world,” Solomon said.
Before the audience goes back to the real world, they get to play pretend too.
“It’s sort of in the words of theater; we play,” Brown said.
Solomon sits in the back of the Greenspring theater, in a red chair that will be occupied in less than two weeks by students and faculty at the premiere of “She Kills Monsters.”
She carefully watches the show that will exist only in that moment. Despite the empty auditorium and the stage barren of costumes and set pieces, the actors joyfully play pretend on stage together.
And it would not matter if they were holding sticks or real swords. Then the scene ends and it went away.
“That was it. That was it — yeah,” Solomon said. “That was the one.”
