You’ve heard of dark academia. Shannon J. Spann introduces readers to dark theater in her new YA fantasy novel A Stage Set for Villains. In Spann’s fictional world of Theatron, art is the defining factor in geography: those in the North abstain from creative endeavors while those in the South are ruled by them, namely by the immortal gods who reign over the Playhouse, a magical theatrical experience. Teen protagonist Riven, who is slowly dying, resents the power of those within the Playhouse. When the Playhouse announces a fight-to-the-death competition that will reward its winner with immortality, Riven has no choice but to enter if she wants to live. We spoke with debut author Spann about her own theater roots, how anger informs her protagonist, and facing a world with an imperfect moral compass.

The Playhouse is heavily inspired by the world of theater. Are you a big theater fan yourself?

I was such a theater kid. I did a lot of theater in high school. I never pursued it professionally or anything. I think there’s something special about theater, especially for the misfits of the world. It’s this escape where you get to try on someone else’s shoes and step into this other portal. It’s very freeing in a way that I think is needed in high school. I’m still a theater nerd. I live in New York, so I’m constantly going to Broadway shows when I can. For a lot of us, we don’t pursue theater professionally, but we carry it around with us. So while I was writing this, I liked the idea of putting a home in between the pages for the theater kids to come back to the theater when they want to.

Where did the character of Riven come from and did she change as you were developing this story?

Riven was the hardest character to write. The thing I remember most was how much she didn’t want me in her head, which was really inconvenient because it’s all in first person. And she was probably the character that changed the most, of all of the cast. Riven felt like a prickly, angry character, and I remember it taking a long time to get underneath the layers of that, because anger is a masking emotion and generally comes from somewhere elseI want her to be an open space for other teens out there who may have been very angry and may not have known why they feel angry. I always say that [her love interest] Jude was like snapping a photo, like he was just there, fully formed. I knew exactly how he thought, what he valued, what he did, and Riven was more like trying to draw a [portrait], very carefully, line by line. It was a little bit like untangling this really sharp barbed wire and then finding something very delicate and soft at the center of it. She’s a character I struggled with badly, but in the end became my favorite.

There’s a major difference between the way art is consumed by the Playhouse vs. those in the North. Why did you want to explore those two very opposite perspectives on art: those who starve themselves of it and those who overindulge?

At the heart of it, what I was trying to explore is the idea that what entertains us is what controls us. And at the end of the story, I really wanted to bring forth the idea that there is nothing evil or bad about art. Art is I think, the center of our humanity. But what happens in the world of the Playhouse is that all the art and the entertainment is controlled by one person, and it’s so dangerous for one individual to wield that power. You see the North starving themselves of it as an over-correction, and then the South overindulging in it as a form they can’t control. It was more an exploration of power and control and the influences of art in the world around us and who may be wielding those influences. Because art belongs to everybody. I want everybody to have access to it, I want everybody to be telling their stories, and it concerns me when it is controlled by a couple of very powerful people.

Riven initially accepts the offer to compete for a spot in the Playhouse, but has a lot of disdain for its members, seeing them, as many do, as villains. What lessons did you want her journey to showcase about preconceptions around morality?

I think I have been confronted often with challenging my own perceptions about what I’ve been taught to believe versus what is real and true and right. With Riven, a hard morality is very comfortable. It would be great if we lived in this black-and-white world where everything makes sense all the time. And I think that is something that I struggle with as a person, and the struggle I want to bring to the page. Oftentimes things don’t make sense; it feels like evil wins, and it feels like life is just unfair. That ended up becoming something I wanted to explore in the book, which is, how do you reconcile living in an unfair world?

A Stage Set for Villains by Shannon J. Spann. Mayhem, Feb. $22.99 ISBN 978-1-6493-7951-1