Thursday, November 14, 2013
Why Everyone Should Study Stage Combat
HowlRound: “Professional Fight Director and Stage Combat Instructor” is apparently one of the best jobs one can possibly have when attending a cocktail party (though for the record, I would like to state that I always say “playwright” first). Outside of the worlds of theater and film, a surprising number of intelligent and educated people are unaware that the job actually exists. And once they do know, there is a lot of curiosity about how our work is done.
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8 comments:
Everyone should take Stage Combat classes. All performers, designers, technicians and managers. Everyone needs to be respectful of anything that can cause harm during a performance and Stage Combat is a great way to learn and understand this respect. As a stage manager I always try to get myself on as an Assistant Fight Supervisor so that I can actively watch and understand the sequence of actions that is going into the Stage Combat. I don't want to be the Fight Supervisor since I don't have the time or often the positioning to watch the sequence, but I still want to be knowledgeable of the subject and have a little bit of input on what is going on. Safety should always be a priority in our industry and the best way is to keep everyone aware of what is going on. So study Stage Combat, because even if you never have to deal with it, it does always make a great conversation starter.
I completely agree with this article, and Tyler. Stage combat is relevant to all disciplines of theater and extremely important because of its safety implications. I hope I get an opportunity take a stage combat class at some point, because I'd like to know more about it and I think that as a stage manager, it's an essential set of knowledge to possess.
The article touched on some thing that I'd never really associated with stage combat, such as character and plot development. It makes sense, of course, because anything that the actors do on stage is significant to both those elements. I had simply never realized how much fight directors need to take character objectives into account in their work. That and the bit on narrative clarity both opened my eyes to the "director" part of fight director, which is why I found this article so interesting.
I've actually had the pleasure of working with Meron Langser three times. He's very insightful about the injuries and the happenings that are associated with stage combat. Meron and his article show his wealth of knowledge on the subject. I wholeheartedly agree with him in that we should all study stage combat because anything that can happen, will happen. It's best to be ready to handle that situation. From the stage manager's perspective, we walked our actors through it every night, preceded by stretching and walking through it. It annoyed the actors to no end, but, at the end of our run, no one was injured.
I love stage combat! It is so graceful and choreographed and has such a dynamic in it that nothing else does. In eighth grade, my class had the drama teacher come in for a couple classes and teach us how to stage fence. We used wooden dowels and cleared out the room so that we had space to move. It was one of the best experiences I had in middle school. I love fight calls for performances so that the actors can practice scenes (with sword fighting in particular). The anticipation is so beautiful and makes me want to know more about it. It is definitely one of the things everyone should learn.
I have always been fascinated with stage combat and have been interested in learning more about it. It is a very cool field of study with many practical applications. I would go so far as to say that Stage Combat is a marital art in of itself. (And I say this with a background in martial arts, so not without basis. The training that goes into the discipline of controlling the strikes translates into all other areas in one's life.
Interesting article! We were having this conversation the other day in StuTech about how great it would be for all of the Stage/Production Managers to have a stage combat class. We wouldn't need to go in-depth, but knowing the basics would be invaluable. It would also be great to know the terminology and the safety techniques. Also for Stage Managers, although each choreographer may be different, fight choreographers take fight notation differently to how we would. So that would be a great class to add to our curriculum.
He makes a great point about safety, anytime that I have choreographed or taught stage combat the first thing i work on is safety and trusting each other. one of the greatest points for any stage combat scene is to remember "fencing measure" which is the distant at which no matter the move you won't make contact with the other person. This is an important concept to remember when practicing a scene because it garantuees that while learning a routine people will be less likely to be injured. Trust is a huge part of any fight scene and practicing with a fencing measure is a way to develop trust for the routine. If you don't trust your partner though you will be more likely to get injured.
I have only taken 4 classes in stage combat, and I think that those classes made me more aware of the safety that goes into creating live theatre. The instructor of these courses made sure that we didn't do anything physical until we understood conceptually what was going on. I think when stage combat looks bad it is because the actor is too focused on being safe because they haven't been trained on how to properly punch someone.
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