Nerds unite! Chainmail Bikini is a valentine to freaks and geeks

Tybalt didn’t have to roll a 20-sided dice to see if he strikes Mercutio (+5 to “pox on both your houses”) and it didn’t take a necromancer to summon Hamlet’s father from beyond the grave. Directors don’t double as dungeon masters, and the only time a seasoned actor finds himself donning a dwarf costume is when Tolkien or Wagner is in town.
    But trade actors for high school students, elaborate sets for hand-written dungeon descriptions, and the parallels are obvious: theatre and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons share a love of make-believe.
    Returning to his own role-playing roots, playwright and director Peter Boychuk describes his first fringe festival production, Chainmail Bikini, as a “valentine to the freaks and geeks.” Set in a fledgling, titular gaming store where partners Tim and Derek find themselves contending with the prejudices of a community that sees role-playing as tantamount to devil worship and moral decay, the play attempts to humanize characters who spend as much time sharpening fictitious axes as they do refining their social skills.
    “The biggest inspiration for the piece was the number of really good guys I knew and met through my life who weren’t blessed with social skills, and how hard that can be when you don’t fit into the status quo,” says Boychuk.
    With its main characters opposed by Tim’s former friend, a zealous Christian convert named Lucas, Chainmail Bikini is at least as concerned with society’s lingering fears about its outsiders as it is with the unique quirks of role-players. Though the paranoia of ’80s films like Mazes and Monsters is largely forgotten, the play’s references to a Columbine-style shooting remind audiences that the fear of our outcasts remains contemporary.
    “I don’t think it’s as prevalent as it was in the ’80s, but it’s still out there,” he says. “One of the reasons I was so fascinated is because it’s a microcosm of the right’s reaction to pop culture, whether it be Harry Potter and the big backlash about the witchcraft or Lord of the Rings. It’s an interestingly polarized time, so I wanted to touch on that in a context that’s not ordinary.”
    But if the context is different, it isn’t necessarily universal — though role-playing gamers are devoted to their tabletops, their passion doesn’t tend to spread. It’s a contrast that first presented itself during the play’s premiere at this year’s Calgary Region One-Act Play Festival, where it took an award for direction. Even if most audiences have only ever held a six-sided dice in a spirited game of Monopoly, Boychuk hopes they can still find something familiar in his Chainmail Bikini.
    “That was a big one because it sort of plays to two different audiences. (The One-Act Play Festival) was a real gauge for me,” he says. “Half the audience didn’t even know what RPGs were and half were die-hard gamers, and you have to play to both at the same time.”
    Even a seasoned gaming veteran like Boychuk himself required a refresher course in the finer points of role-playing, proof that even though theatre and gaming share common ground, they’ve both got miles to cover before meeting in the middle. “I do a lot of research when I write because I want to get all the in-jokes right and worked with a lot of the people to make sure all the references are correct. I wanted to make sure I was up to date,” he says. “At the same time, the universality has to be there, something anyone can engage with, and its (being) wrapped in this subculture is how I’m trying to do it, because otherwise it’s just one in-joke.”