I was socially shunned for my childhood obsessions with tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, so it’s been gratifying to watch mainstream media successes like Stranger Things and Twenty-Sided Tavern make RPGs appealing to a wider audience. But none of those shows have dug beneath the fantastical surface and delved into D&D’s deep emotional impact on adolescent outsiders quite as effectively as Qui Nguyen’s 2011 award-winning dramedy She Kills Monsters, the eye-popping and -moistening onstage epic now running at Valencia College’s East Campus Black Box through Feb. 24.
I was socially shunned for my childhood obsessions with tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, so it’s been gratifying to watch mainstream media successes like Stranger Things and Twenty-Sided Tavern make RPGs appealing to a wider audience. But none of those shows have dug beneath the fantastical surface and delved into D&D’s deep emotional impact on adolescent outsiders quite as effectively as Qui Nguyen’s 2011 award-winning dramedy She Kills Monsters, the eye-popping and -moistening onstage epic now running at Valencia College’s East Campus Black Box through Feb. 24.
