Non-Player Character
Walt McGough
San Francisco Playhouse, Sandbox Series
![]() |
Devin O'Brien, Annemaria Rajala, Tyler McKenna & Emily Radosevich |
As #MeToo revelations proliferate from the worlds of
business, entertainment, politics, education, and beyond and as stories
continue to emerge of high school and college students being harassed online by
jealous and spiteful classmates, the world premiere of San Francisco
Playhouse’s Non-Player Character by
Walt McGough could unfortunately not be more timely. As part of its Sandbox Series featuring new
plays receiving something more than a staged reading and something less than a
full-on, main-stage production, Non-Player
Character under the imaginative, cutting-edge, no-holes-barred direction of
Lauren English is a new work setting high standards in its creative approach
and its compelling, disquieting, and thought-provoking messages.
![]() |
Devin O'Brien & Emily Radosevich |
Friends since childhood, Katja and Trent are now
twenty-somethings on opposite coasts who are an unbeatable team in the virtual
world of Spearlight Chronicles III -- an online role-playing game where they
meet, chat, and play games regularly as avatars. While not at a local coffee shop or bar, they
still have that same back-and-forth habit of finishing each other’s incomplete
thoughts, of providing lots of friendly and even heartfelt support, and of just
being friends hanging out. But when they
don their online armor, they are an unbeatable duo as they fight a wicked farmer’s
Evil Zuchinni, Enraged Rose, or the most dreaded of all – the Pumpkin-Spiced
Doom.
Their virtual meetings and battles are astonishingly
recreated by a stellar team that Lauren English has assembled. Jacqueline Scott’s set design, Wolfgang
Wachalovsky’s lighting, and especially Theodore J.H. Hulsker’s sound and
projection designs combine with Leandra Watson’s other worldly costumes to put
us as audience smack dab in the middle of an online, virtual world that is so
real to be both fascinating and creepy.
For the entire first act and some of the second, we only encounter
avatars -- some of which are controlled by unseen players and some appearing as
NPC’s, a non-player character controlled by the game and not by a gamer.
But those avatars are in fact very real with deeply felt emotions
that develop, grow, and finally want to burst into the open. It is when a confession of love is sweetly
and awkwardly made by Trent’s avatar to Katja’s – a love evidently with
real-world roots from their encounters in college – that a glitch pops up in
their now exclusively online relationship.
![]() |
Emily Radosevich |
When not working as a barista at Starbucks, Katja is an
aspiring game developer, creating a game based on storytelling versus killing
monsters. Her new life in Seattle has
time for work, game design, and occasional online tournaments against monsters.
However in her real-life world, there is
no time or desire to have her avatar friendship with Trent (who in reality is
back in Lancaster, PA) become what he wants -- a move to her coast in order to
be closer to her.
When Katja’s avatar is less than welcoming of virtual
Trent’s expressed hope to be more real-world in their relationship, the actual
Trent turns to the online gaming community for support and revenge of his hurt
feelings. Via a YouTube-like video, he
tells a bitter story of being used by a female who is just looking to advance
her own career, no matter whom she hurts along the way. The vitriolic, anonymous reactions that
explode online include language, pictures, and threats that are horrific and
scary – all from people who have never met either Trent or Katja but who are
now intent on ruining Katja’s life with the same vengeance they use to fight
and kill online demons. And we are
witnesses as the play further unfolds to the effects and changes in victim
Katja and in perpetrator Trent – neither now any longer avatars in their protective
armor.
Both Emily Radosevich as Katja and Devin O’Brien as Trent
are mesmerizing to watch as they manipulate and project their avatar selves in
the first half of the play. Both are
attractively gawky as they work their way through conversations as avatars --
reflecting some combination of shyness, geekiness, and nervous energy that one
might expect from two who are most at home when madly hitting the keys that
send their warrior selves to fight the gigantic and deadly threats of a virtual,
dark kingdom. They talk back and forth
mostly in spurts, starts, and stops -- often even as avatars unable to look
eye-to-eye or to keep their hands from nervously twitching and shaking.
![]() |
Emily Radosevich |
Each of the two actors transforms in Act Two to a real-life
person that is often difficult to watch.
Ms. Radosevich’s Katja breaks one’s heart and at the same time raises
one’s rage seeing what she is going through due to online attacks that are
threatening and damaging in very real ways.
She so realistically captures what we too often read about when someone
– particularly a young woman – has become the target of virtual
vitriolization. And Mr. O’Brien’s Trent
that we see via room-size videos is now a glassy eyed, smooth-talking monster –
more unsettling and scary than the ones he and Katja so cleverly destroyed only
a few days prior.
Other virtual and earthly beings inhabit Walt McGough’s new play;
but none seems yet fully developed in concept or character while each still has
hints of something intriguing. Most
compelling of this lot is Feldrick, an avatar bully who is also part buffoon as
played bigger-than-life by Tyler McKenna.
A cross between cave-man and Tarzan, Feldrick is the first hint that
there is an underlying gamer culture that is anti-women and just on the verge
at any moment to be abusive in attitude and language.
Feldrick’s sidekick is a slick, high-heeled Morwyn
(Annemaria Rajala) who adds some humor as an avatar playing on mute and who also
has her own real-life secrets. But
neither her online self or her real-life self (that one portrayed by Dean Koya
as Grant) do much to advance the story and in fact are a bit distractive and
puzzling in their present forms.
Charrise Loriaux is Naomi, Katja’s Starbucks manager and
increasingly, her friend and sympathizer.
Ms. Loriaux’s idiosyncratic and quirky ways of portraying Naomi might
work in a different story but seem somewhat disjointed and unnecessary in the
present one.
But the strong message of this new work comes loud and clear
through the outstanding performances and character development provided for
Katja and Trent. If anyone is at all
doubtful that online, anonymous hateful messages are not a real and
ever-present threat, consider this. From
just the press release of this play that states that “after a humiliating
fall-out, Trent marshals an army of internet trolls to wage real-life war
against her” (i.e., Katja), online reaction to the play has included messages
(sent by some real person, somewhere) such as “a bunch of f---ts that they are
artsy and more educated than other people” and “I’m guessing the play is women
and gay men finding stuff straight men enjoy, infiltrating it, and destroying
it.”
Yes, San Francisco Playhouse’s world premiere of the virtual
world of Non-Player Character is all
too real, all too reflective of an online world that is sometimes overrun by
unseen, unidentified voices mean and misogynic and whose damage can be real. This is a new work well-worth seeing and one
that, with some further development, will hopefully have legs to play across
the nation.
Rating: 3.5 E
Non-Player Character
continues through March 3, 2018 in production as a part of San Francisco
Playhouse’s Sandbox Series, playing at The Creativity Theatre, Yerba Buena
Gardens, 221 4th Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at www.sfplayhouse or by calling 415-677-9596.
Photos by Jessica Palopoli
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I love seeing websites that understand the value of providing a quality resource for free. It is the old what goes around comes around routine. Jason Aldean Tickets
ReplyDelete