“One Night in the Tavern,” a Theater Department capstone written and directed by Ryan Natcharian ’23, debuted in the Russell House with performances on Oct. 27, 28, and 29. Based on Dungeons & Dragons, this show depicts a bard who attempts to tell the audience about a hero who defeats a dragon, but everyone else keeps interrupting the bard with their own versions of the story.

I took a seat on one of the couches in the Russell House and looked around. The play was performed across two rooms, each of which had a few round tables and stools, emulating the feel of a tavern or bar. The room I sat in was dimly lit, though there were candles on the tables and the mantle, giving the space a cozy atmosphere. As I looked around, I was greeted by Jedric, played by Cameron Bonnevie ’23. Introducing himself as the keeper of Jedric’s Tavern, he offered me a selection of drinks, the specials being “Dragon’s Breath” and “Honey Mead.”

As more audience members and characters entered the tavern, the space came alive. One character, Siobhan the Wizard, played by Clara Medina ’26, was fixated on her book, telling the audience members around her that she was writing her thesis. Another character, Lannis “The Weasel” Greenleaf, played by Cheyenne McLaskey ’26, seemed a bit upset, walking through the two rooms and ranting to audience members. I was approached by a character named Eris the Assassin, played by Lola Cortez ’26. We had a lovely conversation: she asked me whether I had come by the tavern before and complimented my glasses. Though I have to say, her red-tinted glasses were much cooler than mine.

Then Seamus, the bard, played by Jeremy Meehan ’26, stood in the archway connecting the two rooms and began to tell his tale about a mighty hero, a dangerous dragon, a princess, and a fairy. However, much to his dismay, the other characters were not too eager to listen and instead started interrupting. These hilarious exchanges included Siobhan asking, “How did that actually happen? Like, that seems really improbable” and Vanya the Omniscient, Prophet of the Sun, played by Leila Mujic ’23, interjecting, “That’s not really how that happened.”

As Seamus got more and more frustrated, the other characters only seemed to grow bolder with their interjections until finally Gabriel Verger the Fighter, played by Joe Greenfield ’24, stood up, pushed Seamus out of the way, and began telling his own version of the story. Interestingly, his story was about himself and how powerful a knight he was. Unfortunately for him (yet quite hilariously for the audience), the other characters kept yelling “virgin” at him when he was announcing his last name. Even during his tale, the others would keep up the name-calling, causing the audience to burst into laughter every couple of minutes or so. Halfway through Gabriel’s story, Seamus got back up, taking his original place in the archway, and asked Gabriel to please sit down. 

These exchanges continued throughout the show: Seamus attempted to tell his story, and the other characters kept interrupting. Again and again, the back-and-forth culminated in one of the characters getting up, pushing Seamus out of the way, and telling their version of the story. At one point, Eris threatened Seamus with a knife! Vanya’s story, where she described how she was a cult leader of a group that traveled around watching solar eclipses, was particularly funny. I loved its pure fantasy and silliness.

Towards the end, the characters broke into a screaming match, each trying to say that their version of the story was correct. This continued until Jedric moved from his place behind the bar and screamed, “Quiet!” Once the tavern fell silent, Jedric took Seamus’s place under the archway and told the true version of the story everyone had been debating.

Jedric explained that there was once a princess who was kidnapped by a dragon. While she was held captive, she met a fairy who said that every day she would grow stronger and be able to fight the dragon. But the caveat was that she would lose her name and would revert back to her original state every month. The princess, seeing no other option, took the fairy’s deal. Almost instantly, she started to feel stronger. In the morning, she was able to escape the dragon. Once free, she went down to a local tavern for a hot meal. The people there, assuming she was a knight, asked her, “What would you like to eat, sir?”

As she grew stronger and stronger, she wanted to help people tormented by different beasts in other villages. Jedric tells us how the knight encountered many of the other characters, like Vanya and Gabriel. Over time, she realized that she actually identified more as a knight than a princess.

“He looked like a knight, he felt like a knight, he acted like a knight. He was a knight,” Jedric said.

But at the end of the month, the knight reverted back to a princess, standing in a frilly pink dress. Jedric spoke of how eventually, after months of this torture, the knight once again came face-to-face with the fairy. He desperately asked the fairy why she did this.

“Because you’re not really a knight, are you?” the fairy said. 

Out of anger, he stepped on the fairy, killing her and breaking the curse, only to realize that he had lost his knightly strength. Still wanting to stay true to himself and take care of people he fought beasts to protect, he opened a tavern, a space where he could help people with their struggles and listen to their stories. You could hear a pin drop in the room as the audience realized that this, in fact, was Jedric’s story. Afterward, Jedric ushered everyone out, helping Lannis, who had fallen asleep, get up. Lastly, he hugged Gabriel, who knew of Jedric’s story the whole time—a wholesome ending to a beautiful story.

After watching the show, I sat down with Natcharian and chatted about her process of developing the show.

“It was mainly based on the question of ‘How do we make Dungeons & Dragons into a staged play?’” Natcharian said. “We just sort of threw together a couple of very basic fantasy tropes like ‘There’s a bartender who’s secretly the hero the whole time’ and made a very simple outline. Before we went forward and wrote a script, we figured it would be more true to the game and more true to the genre in general if we let the actors come up with their own characters and improvise their own stories.”

When asked about how that process worked, Natcharian said that she gave the actors a couple of ideas, and they either gravitated toward one idea and built on it or came up with a whole new idea. Natcharian expressed that while not every cast member was a seasoned improviser, over the course of their six weeks of rehearsal, they played improv games and did character work that helped everyone become more comfortable.

“They’ve really really grown and gotten a lot better at taking what we suggest to them and incorporating it really well into what we’ve already established,” Natcharian said.

I was shocked to find out that Natcharian and the production team never wrote a script. Rather, they let the actors come up with their own lines and tweak them from show to show while still maintaining the overall story’s throughline.

“There’s been some advantages and disadvantages to [not having a script],” Natcharian said. “I really liked the naturalness of the lines. I was afraid to write out dialogue because I didn’t want it to sound weird and clunky. Just having the actors talk to each other was a much better way to produce that dialogue.”

Natcharian discussed the possibility of writing out a script after the show’s closing.

“We think there’s a really compelling story in the play that we want to immortalize and possibly reproduce in the future,” Natcharian said.

While we don’t know what the future holds for this show, being an audience member was a really wonderful experience. Feeling immersed in the tavern, laughing alongside the characters at the jokes and almost tearing up upon hearing Jedric’s story gave me the opportunity to really connect with the performers, something that I feel is a true gift.

Sabrina Ladiwala can be reached at sladiwala@wesleyan.edu.