Director’s Note:
”In the past year, we have all found ourselves in uncharted waters, reminiscent of a sea at the edge of a fantasy world map. Many of us have turned to stories of other worlds as a form of coping; fantasy worlds allow us to escape when our reality seems unbearable. But the imagined realms to which we escape are often where we process our real-world struggles and emerge changed, for the better. This is why we tell stories. 

Dungeons and Dragons and theatre-making are more similar than you might think. Both practices involve collaborative storytelling where the individuals all agree to engage in a  collective imagining of a new world. In tribute to the analog nature of D&D and to enhance the idea of collective storytelling, all of the elements of the show were created in collaboration between director, designer, and actor in the spirit of make-believe magic. The costumes are inspired by cosplay and the youthful exploration of dress-up; the special effects are made by novelty lighting tools that we toyed with until they looked other worldly; and the battle magic is created with choreography that asks the actors and audience to share in an imagined battle that is bottled into movements that are scaled down for a tabletop game and a desktop production in Zoom. In some ways, creating apart has made us more collaborative than ever.

Theatre and D&D are both about people making their imaginings manifest - we build worlds. We build them to reflect our values: we created a world that is accessible and inclusive, where we respect and celebrate our differences, and where we honor our individual stories as we weave our shared adventure together. We create fantasies filled with dragons, magic, and improbably adventures. But our greatest imagining is that the worlds we create will impact the real world in which we all live. “