If you're planning on playing Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet" and need to brush up on your swordplay, or if you have dreams of guest starring on "Xena: The Warrior Princess," you might consider a summer intensive workshop in stage combat. Whichever coast you happen to live on, there are a number of opportunities to participate in summer intensives for both beginning and advanced stage combat students. One of the longest running workshops, the National Stage Combat Workshop (NSCW), offers a three-week intensive, July 12-30, on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The workshop, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this summer, is administered by the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD), a professional organization founded in 1977 to promote the art of fight choreography and combat safety in American stage and cinema.
While SAFD Fight Masters (the highest level of certification in the SAFD) offer workshops and seminars throughout the U.S. during the year, this Las Vegas conference is the only place where top Fight Masters will be teaching together at the same workshop. Says Linda McCollum, the on-site coordinator for the NSCW, "If you go to a regional SAFD workshop, you're working with maybe one or two Fight Masters. Here you've got six." Fight Masters teaching this year's workshop will include Drew Fracher, Dale Girard (the current SAFD president), Joseph Martinez, and Allen Suddeth.
The workshop, which is geared toward beginners, accepts a maximum of 40 students each summer, and students are divided into two sections, so there's never more than 20 students in a class. The workshop is open to anyone 18 years or older, in good general health, and interested in not only their physical technique but their knowledge of how to effectively and safely stage a combat scene. "Intensive" is the key word to describe the regime students go through. The NSCW runs Monday through Saturday, with Sundays off. A typical day begins with a half-hour warm-up at 8:30 am, followed by two 90-minute morning classes focusing on a particular skill. After a lunch break, students attend two intensive afternoon classes followed by a dinner break. While the first week of the program has a light evening schedule, by the second week, students continue working with teachers until 10 pm each night on their combat skills.
Over the course of the three-week workshop, students learn rapier, daggers, broadsword, quarterstaff, and unarmed combat. The program ends with an optional test for SAFD certification. Those who pass are eligible to join SAFD as an Actor/Combatant member. "Besides exhaustion and sore muscles, students will have the best foundation they can possibly get in this art form," asserts McCollum. "It's for people that are really serious about it."
In addition to the actor/combatant workshop described above, the NSCW also offers an advanced workshop, held during the same three weeks in July. Students are screened before they can participate in this more rigorous, detailed course. This year's advanced conference will be led by David Boushey, along with Erik Fredricksen. The deadline to apply to the advanced program is April 15. Deadline for the actor/combatant workshop is May 1, with a tuition of $1,200. The advanced workshop costs $1,400. SAFD members get $100 off the price of tuition, while SAG/AFTRA/Equity members can get a $50 rebate. Housing is available at the cost of $338 and food is not included in the tuition.
National Stage Combat Workshop, Linda McCollum, (702) 895-3662.
To Live and Fight in L.A.
In addition to battling their way through the traffic in Los Angeles, west coast actors can also consider two summer stage-combat workshops. The first is the Academy of Theatrical Combat, headed by Dan Speaker and his wife, Jan Bryant. They are two of the top theatrical sword masters in the United States, and both have numerous professional credits to back up their status. Speaker has worked as a fight choreographer for "Hook," "Army of Darkness," Disney's "The Three Musketeers," and (with Bryant) "The New Adventures of Robin Hood" TV series. Bryant, whom Speaker claims is the only female sword master in the business, recently performed stunts in "The Mask of Zorro."
The husband-and-wife team runs its program out of the Los Angeles Repertory Company. Other teachers include top professionals working in the field‹Kim Turney, Jamieson Price, and Speaker's brother, Dave. In addition to an ongoing Professional Training Workout that is for "people involved professionally in combat and sword fight for stage and screen," according to Speaker, his school offers a number of beginning workshops and seminars throughout the year.
While he does not know the dates yet, Speaker says he plans to offer a six-week workshop this summer. Students can expect to learn the basics of combat‹doing a partnered scene, learning broadsword, quarterstaff, theatrical saber, and hand-to-hand. As Speaker describes the workshop, which costs an affordable $120, "It's pretty much an overview of what you need for performing fight scenes. We have a progressive, professional methodology of teaching people how to perform safe and effective fight scenes." The ongoing professional workshop, which is by audition only and requires students to have taken the beginning workshop, costs $80 a month. Speaker tends to lead these higher-level classes, which recreate historical styles of combat.
Academy of Theatrical Combat: (323) 939-7345; website: .
Bob Goodwyn, who runs Action Actors Academy in Culver City, will also be offering workshops this summer, in addition to his year-round classes at the Westside Fencing Center (in the Helms Bakery building). Goodwyn is also a seasoned pro who has trained and/or choreographed such actors as Illeana Douglas, Charles Dutton, and Jennifer Tilly. He was a sword/Foley consultant on "Rob Roy" and a martial arts trainer for the film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." Goodwyn has 15 years of theatrical fight direction experience.
Goodwyn will be offering two four-week intensives, both running July 11-Aug. 1. Students can take one or both workshops, which will be held back to back on Sundays. Each class is two hours. The first class is an on-camera combat intensive for beginners. Participants learn to "tell the story through reaction, timing, and technique," according to Goodwyn, who claims to be the only teacher offering an on-camera stage combat workshop in Los Angeles County.
Goodwyn explains that by being conducted in the class on camera, students "learn the camera angles that best sell the technique." He adds, "Being able to act the action sells it. That's why we do the on-camera work‹so you can see how you're acting or not acting. You learn to adjust to changes on the set, which is a big factor most people don't realize. Anybody who's been in front of the camera knows that you rehearse one thing and then the director changes his mind on the spot. I give people the experience of what it's like to work on a live set, so it's not just structured classroom skills." The foremost goal of the class is to teach students to act the fight safely. Then they work on realism and the aesthetics of the particular period.
The other four-week summer intensive Goodwyn will offer is an on-camera sword workshop in which students can learn the sword work used on such popular shows as "Xena" and "Hercules," and the recent "Zorro" film. "I pull from classical manuals from old European fencers‹people like Capo Ferro's 17th-century manual, or the classical French system of Domenico Angelo from 1787," says Goodwyn.
Fencing experience is not required, and students are provided with a sword. The cost of the intensive is $150, as is the on-camera combat workshop. Goodwyn also offers ongoing advanced combat classes for more experienced students.
Action Actors Academy: (310) 558-1143; .
We'll Always Have Paris
One of the most intriguing summer workshops on offer is taught by professional fight choreographers Rick Sordelet and Allen Suddeth. (The latter is also participating in this year's National Stage Combat Workshop in Vegas.). Sordelet and Suddeth, who have extremely impressive credits, offer a two-and-a-half-week intensive at the Celebration Barn Theatre, in Paris, Maine, each summer.
Sordelet‹whose fight choreography credits include such current Broadway hits as "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Scarlet Pimpernel," and "Titanic"‹warns that the workshop is very exclusive and is by invitation only, though he welcomes actors and choreographers to contact him if interested. The program accepts 14 actors and seven choreographers. While actors will definitely get a lot out of this experience, the workshop is especially geared to enlighten theatrical choreographers.
"It's the most comprehensive class any choreographer could take on stage combat," explains Sordelet. "Each choreographer is assigned two actors, and we do everything from Shakespeare to Shepard, using weapons of all type."
The key to convincing and dramatic stage combat, continues Sordelet, is the quality of the acting. "It's all about the acting of the fight," he says. "I'm all for technique, but technique doesn't work eight shows a week. We take the term "fight director' to heart. Both Allen and I are fight directors." It should be noted that Suddeth's credits include almost a thousand episodes of soap operas, from "All My Children" to "Another World." He was the fight choreographer for "Jekyll & Hyde" on Broadway and has numerous theatrical credits in regional theatre.
Celebration Barn Theatre workshop: (800) 211-6152.
Lastly, we recommend that if you have a computer and have Internet access, log onto Yahoo! and type "stage combat." You will find a myriad of information about combat classes taught around the United States, Canada, and Europe. An especially informative site is the New York Fight Ensemble website, at www.nyfe.com. In addition to listing a number of classes taught by members of the New York Fight Ensemble, the site also offers valuable information on other stage combat workshops and seminars taught outside of its organization.