How the gatekeeping of suffering influenced Jo Tan's D&D-inspired play Session Zero

On the surface, the play Session Zero could be a metaphor many things, depending on who you ask.

For those who play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), it’s simply a representation of a hobby that has been misunderstood and only saw a boost in mainstream popularity and acknowledged after Netflix’s Stranger Things.

For the common man, a play about an estranged couple attempting to reconnect over a game of D&D seems to indicate a broader discussion about love and relationships.

Yet, the genesis of Session Zero is neither D&D (specifically) nor a troubled marriage.

Speaking to Yahoo Southeast Asia earlier this month, playwright, and also one-half of the cast, Jo Tan, revealed one of the inspirations for the play came from comparing the gatekeeping of games to the gatekeeping of suffering.

When she picked up D&D during the pandemic lockdown, strangely enough, the 41-year-old said she “came into conflict with a lot of friends”.

Tan was going through “a whole bunch of issues” about her identity and plans for the future, and she felt that some around her trivialised her experience because they were “suffering more”.

She shared, “I was literally told, like, that’s nothing, what you’re experiencing is nothing compared to what I was going through.

“And it took me a really long time to go, ‘It's okay. Different types of pain can exist. It’s the same way different types of gamers can exist, and you don't just dismiss the other person's experience.’”

Another inspiration for Session Zero, according to Tan, was the idea of D&D as a “proxy for communication” - something she pondered about while she was playing the game.

She explained, “With that personality that I often put on in my D&D games, it also made me think like, if I was a different person, could I heal these relationships between myself and other people?”

“And I think that's how the play began,” she added.

“It’s the idea of two people who have just become so far apart, but if you put them in the same fantasy world, will they be able to find a language where they will be able to communicate again?”

While the couple attempts to get to know each other again by seeing a different side to themselves, Tan also said it’s interesting to explore whether the game becomes “an escape that’s too far from reality where you don’t want to confront certain issues”.

Not just about the D&D stuff

As someone who has previously written plays that are very closely inspired by real-life experiences - like Happy Place and King - Tan is no stranger to letting people get a peek into her life.

This time, though, Session Zero isn’t a reflection of her marriage, even if the play centres around a troubled one.

The local thespian said, “I just think that when you write plays, you want the characters to be relatable. And if you think about a relationship that has fallen apart irretrievably that the audience can connect with, I mean, it's the most straightforward approach to put a marriage on the stage.

“Most people, even if you're not married, you've seen enough of it on TV to just go like, I automatically kind of want to be invested in it.”

It’s this same accessibility to the story and characters that drew 44-year-old Brendon Fernandez (who plays the husband to Tan’s wife) to the play.

The actor of more than 20 years said, “I think it's a fantastic work as a piece of theatre… because the characters are so recognisable, I think that is what we do well, in Singapore theatre, and particularly, what Checkpoint [Theatre] does well is take Singapore stories and put them on stage.”

“The D&D stuff is great as well, but also the humanity of the two characters who are really struggling with the love that they have for each other. And it's not an easy love that they have for each other,” he added.

But Fernandez, who is a big fan of D&D, also admitted that he is “obviously biased”.

He tried to play the second edition, but found it a bit too complex. However, he retained his interest in the worlds and the novels and has read many of them, including the R.A. Salvatore Drizzt serie, and his favourite trio of novels, to date — the Dragonlance Chronicles written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Fernandez added, “Just the idea of fantasy worlds where they were dwarves and elves and dragons and heroism, and people deciding to put aside their differences for the greater good - these are stories that I escaped to as a kid, and so those stories really stuck with me.”

How is the play different from 2021?

This isn’t the first time Session Zero has been staged - with its initial run in 2021 being completely sold out.

The story remains the same, but both Tan and Fernandez are coming back as very different people.

Fernandez said, “I think the nice thing is I’m in a better place than I was two years ago, I think. Coming out of the pandemic was tough for a lot of people.”

He explained that the first time Session Zero was staged, though it was great that they could bring people back into the theatre, there was also “stress and anxiety” about things that could go wrong.

But now, they get a chance to “really dig into their characters and the material in a way that we didn't have before”, and he has a newfound empathy for them.

“It is a hopeful play, for me. It is hopeful because we don't shy away from looking at the difficulty of being in a relationship. And because we explore it, we see what a marriage can be like, warts and all,” Fernandez shared.

For Tan, she is more secure about herself now than she was two years ago, and doesn’t feel that she “has to be a certain way necessarily to be accepted”.

“Which is a great place to be, you know, but I’m not fully there yet,” she clarified.

However, this transition also changed the way she interpreted her character of Woman. In the previous run, Woman was interpreted as a victim and a damsel in distress as Tan thought she had to play her “in a certain way”.

It was “a very hard part for me to play” and she wondered how palatable her character would be to audiences. Now, Woman is taking more responsibility for her choices.

Tan explained, “Coming into it now, I take more responsibility for Woman's flaws, for the choices she makes, which can be terrible choices, and just the fact that she's there. And she's asking for a continuation of this relationship as who she is, not as a victim, not saying you have wronged me, you have done these things to me, you have kept me from certain things. She has made mistakes as well, and I think this is something that I'm realising as Jo.”

She added, “Life is hard for everybody and Jo is learning to deal with it, and Woman is learning to deal with it. And hopefully, that just makes the characters in the show much more close to you, much more familiar. They could be you, they could be your friend, they could be your spouse.”

And is she worried that using something as niche as D&D as a narrative vehicle might alienate the general audience?

Without missing a beat, Tan replied, “Oh, no, I'm not really worried about that. I think the wonderful thing about theatre is that it uses very specific subject matter to talk about very accessible topics, just to talk about humanity in general. I think that the angle of D&D is a really fun one that people get to access humanity from.

“I still have some people who say, oh, D&D is very niche. I really don't think it is anymore. It’s entered into very accessible pop culture. You know, like, if you watch Stranger Things, you will be familiar with it. If you watch The Legend of Vox Machina, you'll be familiar with it. I don't think it's become something niche and weird anymore.”

Session Zero runs from 19-29 Oct and you can get your tickets here.

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