Act Out

The Homestead High School Theatre Department presents”She Kills Monsters: Young Adventurers Edition”

Performed live on Oct 23 and 24 at 7pm, Oct 25 at 1pm

The play will be streamed Virtually through Facebook Live on the Homestead High School Drama Club Page, look for the events for each performance.

The “she” who kills monsters is 15-year-old Tilly Evans, of Athens, Ohio; her Dungeons & Dragons name is Tillius the Paladin. As the play opens, Tilly has been killed in a car crash, leaving behind Tilly’s older sister, Agnes the Average, and a notebook containing “The Lost Soul of Athens,” a D&D adventure that Tilly created. Agnes never paid much attention to her sister, but now she’s hoping to connect through the notebook, so she seeks out über-geek freshmen Chuck. Suddenly Agnes finds herself inside the notebook, joining Tilly and her friends Lilith Morningstar and Kaliope Darkwalker on a quest to recapture the lost soul of Athens from Orcus, demon lord of the underworld. 

It turns out that Tilly based her characters on people she knew, a fact that leads Agnes to discover a secret that Tilly never shared with her. The secret, Tilly’s homosexuality, is uncovered when Agnes learns that Tilly and Lilith kiss in the D&D world as girlfriends, and now Agnes questions if she really knew her sister when she was alive.  The focus of this play is the relationship between the sisters, and how Agnes’ attempt to reconnect with her sibling becomes the vehicle for her own personal growth.  Though Agnes first scoffs at the game’s eccentricities and bizarre scenarios, the more she commits to the game’s fantasy, the more adept she becomes at mastering the hard facts of her own life, emerging at the play’s end victorious with her sword hilt-deep into a dragon of doubt. 

This is a high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and ’90s pop culture, it’s a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.