Jenn Zuko Boughn Her book, Stage Combat: Fisticuffs, Stunts and Swordplay for Theatre and Film is the required textbook for Metro State and other stage combat programs in colleges across the country. She has been practicing and teaching the arts of stage combat since 1997, and Japanese martial arts since 1998. I visit her website:…
Category: Stage Combat
Stage Combat Stances
Every martial art will first teach the student how to stand, and the ideal positions to fight from. For actors in a stage fight, they must start with an appropriate stance for their weapon or historical period, combine that with their character's attitude, and sometimes add nuances of injuries or mannerisms. Basic Stance Standing upright…
No Stage Combat Today
Just a reminder that the FDC Annual General Meeting is preempting today's stage combat class. Capilano college is hosting the AGM as part of the Nationals at 6:30 pm today. Comment on this post on our Posterous Blog.
Stretching Towards Splits
How do you perform high kicks to prove you’re a “real martial artist”? Even educated and experienced stunt coordinators look for leg flexibility when choosing who will perform well in fight scenes. Why? Mostly because the public demands it. So, you have to increase your flexibility to give the people what they want. The Best…
Bourne to Fight
The three Bourne movies are often cited as favourites of modern film fights. Let's take a closer look. The Bourne Identity Fight Summary: This is the one that made Bourne: Pen Versus Knife. Fight Length: 97 seconds Notes: There is time and space given to character choices, but flurries of attacks are fast and close.…
Unexpected Stage Combat
Here's a recent find that you may have seen on Google+: Installations The idea of an installation is that theatre does not need a building called a "theatre" in order to be a legitimate live performance. When you enter a theatre, you know this: You are a spectator and will not be expected to participate…
Japanese Tate
The art of dying is dying, according to a recent article on NPR: Now 69, Fukumoto recalls landing his first job in the movies as a stuntman and extra with Toei studios in 1959. "When I was younger, our studio had some 400 stuntmen and extras," he remembers. "I wanted to stand out. I…
Theatrical Combat without Theatre
It's nice to read inspirational happy stories that encourage you to train harder and feel great. It's also nice to get clear information and details to help your chosen studies. Normally, I try to give you both. Today, I have to draw your attention to bad news. Vancouver Playhouse Closed I saw one of their…
Boxing on Stage with Sordelet
Here's an excerpt from Ring of Truth: In Studio Theatre’s Sucker Punch, the Sweet Science Is an Art by Chris Klimek Roy Williams’ script sketches most of its fights lightly, using only few words of stage direction. Not until the climactic bout does the 44-year-old British playwright offer a round-by-round prescription of how goes the war.…
Cross-Training for Stage Combat
The actor-combatant (a professional actor who can also perform fight scenes) who actually gets work must be versatile enough to work with the needs of each production, so is cross-training in several martial arts a good thing? Two Kinds of People I hate to be one of those people who divides the world into two…
Knap Time!
"If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered." - Stanley Kubrick Intro to Stage Combat Sunday, February 12, 2012 2pm-6pm In this intensive 4-hour workshop, we’ll cover the basics of stage combat, including: ▪Slaps ▪Punches ▪Chokes ▪Push and fall ▪Sword parries and footwork ▪Sword…
Scenes of Violence
Most actors learn stage combat for a specific role while in rehearsal. My belief that every performer before leaving acting school should have Basic Actor-Combatant certification with Fight Directors Canada does not have widespread support. Therefore, the majority of actors already have a scene to fight to. But actors who are taking the full stage…
Fantasy and Practical Stage Armour
Armour serves two purposes, as does most clothing: protection and fashion. On stage and in film, if you can see the armour, it's for fashion, and if you can't, then it's for protection. The Illusion of Practicality From the blindingly reflective plate on Zeus to the leather scraps on orcs, armour should match the character…
Stage Combat Priorities 3: Storytelling is Not a List of Events, Stupid
We all know that stage combat's first priority is safety, as we learned in Safety...Boring. We also know that many actors like stage combat classes because they learn cool-looking flourishes and how to look like a bad-a__ which we explored last time in Style and Expertise. Both of these are in service of our main…
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Stage Combat Priorities 2: Style and Expertise
The overall goal of stage combat, as we discussed in episode 0: The Illusion of Violence, is creating a violent scene that is safe for the actor and believable to the audience in the context of the show. Last time, we broke down some of the ways in which our first priority, Safety, plays out…
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Ladies and Safety
Another combination of my favourite subjects: stage combat and Edwardian self-defense. To add "...and ladies" would have been very sexist, why would you think I'd say something so rude? Oh yeah, the title of this article. Let me just say at the outset that women tend to be more concerned with personal safety than men…
Stage Combat Priorities 1: Safety... Boring!
This is really the first post in my series on the basics of stage combat and how it is applied in real productions. Last time, I talked about the illusion of violence, and how the effect to the audience must match the rest of the production (a fairy tale should be magical and melodramatic, while…
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Stage Combat Priorities: Illusion II
The practice of stage combat has three priorities which define it: safety, storytelling and style. In this series of posts, we'll talk about each in turn, but today we're going to explore why. The very existence of stage combat is the answer to the question: how do we show the fight on stage without hurting…