Fantastic play. From left: Megha Nabe, Satomi Blair, Margret Odette, Allison Buck, Raul Sigmund Julia and Jack Corcoran in the original New York production of Nguyen’s play. “She Kills Monsters” is hugely popular in high schools and colleges. May Adrales and Qui Nguyen talk about the inspiration for the play and their collaboration. 2016 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award Qui Nguyen writes with such a refreshing, invigorating energy not seen in a lot of plays. When stay-at-home orders went up in the spring, directors with planned productions had to scramble. “We’re dealing with themes that every high schooler, every college student confronts at some point, whether it be this idea of the underdog or familial struggle or sexuality or gender,” said Kelly Trumbull, who is co-directing an online production slated for July 12 at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is a teaching artist. So he retooled the script, tweaking some expressions and altering key elements. In Nathan Alan Davis’s Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea , the hero searches for his ancestor, lost during the Middle Passage. If you can stomach the blood, this is tour-de-force theatre! (Connoisseurs will wince in empathy as the game-master character repeatedly calls “no damage.”), Lisa Nathans, who co-directed the recent University of Maryland virtual production, was taken with Nguyen’s flexibility. University of Pittsburgh students rehearsing in late June for a virtual production of the play, which was scheduled after summer-stock opportunities for aspiring actors dried up. Qui Nguyen. ), In the show, the teenage Tilly dies early on in a car crash and her older sister, Agnes, must deal not just with grief but with how little she knew about her sibling: reading a notebook left behind, she learns that Tilly was a role-playing aficionado, for instance, and that she had a girlfriend in her game world. It's why good plays about torturers abound, and good plays about victims do not. It is a direct reaction to the plays and films about Vietnam that Nguyen was exposed to growing up. Qui Nguyen has been surprised by how fervently high school and college students have embraced “She Kills Monsters.”. Qui Nguyen (Playwright) is a TV/Film writer and Co-Founder of the OBIE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company in NYC. Publisher: Broadway Play Publishing; Author: Qui Nguyen; About The Book. The pair are forced to work demeaning jobs for low wages, while their son Little Man (played by Eugene Young via a toddler-size puppet) is ostracized by his peers for speaking Vietnamese. His parents, Quang and Tong Nguyen, arrived and met in Arkansas where the first refugees arrived in 1975. “The regular play is often done on the coasts and in the middle it’s the YA edition,” Nguyen said, laughing. Even in lockdown, performers have found novel ways to make the battles come alive. “Virtual Realms” retrofits the script and stage directions to maximize online formats in clever ways. Prior to last night’s L.A. premiere of Vietgone, the actor playing playwright Qui Nguyen tells us that his 2015 play is about his parents (“who this play is absolutely not about”), who met and fell in love in 1975 in an Arkansas relocation camp for Vietnamese refugees, jokingly adding that we were assholes if we said anything to them. Qui Nguyen ’s spirited play about finding your real and metaphorical families, as well as yourself, through Dungeons & Dragons did well enough when it … “So I’m glad to be part of these people’s artistic journey.”, Queer Kids, Nerds and Sword Fights: It’s the Hot School Play. Cast members rehearsing for the University of Maryland’s Zoom version of “She Kills Monsters,” which made use of digital backgrounds. “I brought my experiences sometimes being the only Black person in the class to Agnes,” said Jasmine Mitchell, 22, who was in a virtual production at the University of Maryland in May. “The person playing Agnes’s boyfriend was white, and I was using this information to figure out her psychology. “It always felt really alienating. After avenging the death of her lover, a young samurai girl named Dewdrop, along with her faithful sidekick Cert, must now battle through vampire-infested Brooklyn to make it back home. Amateur and youth companies started to produce the show. SHE KILLS MONSTERS: VIRTUAL REALMS, a play by Qui Nguyen Directed by Barrie Gelles. “I definitely love being a badass warrior.” she said. 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