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Fight Choreography - Stage Combat

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Topic: Fight Choreography - Stage Combat

Posted By: demivolte
Subject: Fight Choreography - Stage Combat
Date Posted: 8/30/05 at 4:20pm

Hi everyone,

I'm writing a book on fight choreography and stage combat. I've always enjoyed hearing and sharing stories of stage combat gone terribly wrong. You'd think that asking two actors to swordfight on the top rungs of 8 foot ladders would be a bad idea....and you'd be right! If you've got a real doozy please let me know. These are hopefully humorous in nature and no one was terribly injured. For example, sword blades breaking, guns misfiring or going off at the wrong time, blood packs leaking before their time, people getting slapped so hard they forgot their lines etc...

Thanks for the time,

Andrew Villaverde

Fight Director

http://fight-direction.com - http://fight-direction.com

Replies:

Posted By: POB14
Date Posted: 8/30/05 at 5:41pm

Okay . . . here we go . . .

I had the great pleasure to play Sir Toby once in Twelfth Night. We had a fight choreographer available, and I had had fencing in high school, so we decided to really do up the fight with Antonio. (Sebastian, on the other hand, was . . . ahem . . . mellow much of the time, and dangerous with a sword in hand, so we did one or two parries and called it quits.)

Anyway:

We rehearsed that damn fight for weeks and weeks. Every rehearsal: fight call. It was, if I say so myself, beautiful to behold.

Dress rehearsal.

Went great. Crash, flash, parry, thrust, leap, it was truly a great moment. Until I leaped onto a set piece, swung my rapier high to finish Antonio off . . .

and my breeches fell down. (Thank God for tights. Or maybe not.)

Too bad there wasn't a videotape; somebody would have gotten a couple of thousand bucks out of Bob Saget.

-------------
POB
Old Bugger, Curmudgeon, and Antisocial B**tard

Posted By: Giabow
Date Posted: 9/25/05 at 9:19pm

Last season we did an original piece that was a "prequal to Romeo and
Juliet.' There was a huge fencing scene. That got cut because the
director waiting until Tuesday of tech week (show opened on Friday with a
Thursday preview) to stage the fencing. And then got pissed when the
actors coudln't get it.

The thing that REALLY made me mad was that one of the actors is a
certified combat instructor. He could have been staging combat all along.

Posted By: Dustmac
Date Posted: 10/15/05 at 10:15pm

I can't think of a great story but fight scenes are interesting. Some people have a talent for that and some don't. You can be a great actor and yet struggle with the concept of physical acting.

Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 10/16/05 at 1:14am

Besides Pob?s revealing moment {Farce;- being comedy with it?s pants down!}
There is nothing as farcical as a half baked opponent, or under rehearsed fight scene.
When I did ?Irma La Douce?, I dreaded the fight scene, at the end of the first act.
The bod who was supposed to throw me in an Irish whip, was so limp wrist, I had into to it.
However he finally got the message of "Just throw me" after the tenth performance. He did & I dived into a full pike & a half gainer of disbelief, ending splat on the stage. I didn?t move in sheer surprise & he fell to his knees, sobbing "I killed Joe" as the house curtain came in.
Although I was hurt, I had to get up & thank him, as though there was nothing wrong - The cast gave me a 6.5 with a 10 for the degree of difficulty!
I did suffer later, after spending a night in the casualty ward!

-------------
Joe
Western Gondawandaland
turn right @ Perth.
Hear the light & see the sound.
Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"}
May you always play
to a full house}