WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., April 22, 2025 – The West Liberty University Hilltop Players close their 2024-2025 season with a very popular play that looks at the world of fantasy role-playing games. She Kills Monsters runs April 23-27, 2025 on campus in the Kelly Theater.
“This is a great play to produce in a college theatre program,” says Michael Aulick, Director of the West Liberty Theatre Program. “It provides so many unique projects: acting, designing, puppet making, and puppeteering, stage combat, fantasy makeup, etc.”
In Athens, Ohio, in 1995, extraordinarily ordinary high school student, Agnes Evans, stumbles upon a Dungeons and Dragons module left behind by her younger sister Tilly after the latter unexpectedly passed away in a car crash as a teenager. Wanting to get to know her sister better, even postmortem, Agnes tentatively enlists the help of others to play the game while seeking advice from her school guidance counselor friend and largely avoiding her commitment-shy boyfriend. In the process, together with her late sister, she meets, confronts, fights with, and, sometimes, slays elves, demons, fairies, gelatinous cubes, evil cheerleaders, and others based on real people who had been in her sister’s life as friends and enemies. Ultimately, Agnes, must confront her real demons, acknowledge her sister for who she was, and, finally, battle a dragon before she can proceed on with her own, no-longer-quite-so-ordinary, life.
The creative team for She Kills Monsters is almost entirely made up of students. “We want to provide tons of opportunities for students to ‘do’ theatre, not just learn in the classroom,” Aulick said. The crew consists of Jordan Derring, Daisy Deaton, Len Batson, Morgan Tusing, Hannah Ellis, Aidan Kosol, Traelyn Alton, Cassandra Strader, Lenixx Pugh, and many others rolling up their sleeves and helping get things done.
Willow Peyton portrays Agnes Evans, the protagonist who is searching to reconnect with her dead sister Tilly, played by Rowland Dodd. The rest of the cast includes Traelyn Alton, Len Batson, Azariah Caffee, Ryleigh Jordan, Liam Peklinsky, Rowan McClung, Kelsey Riley, Kirsten Snatchko, Klisty Snider, Eva Tennant, Morgan Tusing, and Joshua Vetanze.
West Liberty University Theatre is a nationally recognized program with the mission of providing a transformative educational experience for undergraduate students of theatre where a personal approach creates a place where they can ‘find their light.’ West Liberty is West Virginia’s oldest public university, and it offers more than 70 undergraduate majors and 12 graduate programs, both online and on campus. Learn more at westliberty.edu.
Tickets can be purchased at wlumonsters.brownpapertickets.com.
Performances run April 23-26 at 7:30 p.m. and April 26-27 at 3 p.m. All performances will be on the campus of West Liberty University on the Kelly Theater stage in the Hall of Fine Arts.
