"Isn't This Counter-Productive?"

Last Wednesday, I had my first rehearsal with the cast where I starting teaching them weapon basics, and it was…. Interesting. Challenging, but enlightening. I knew that it would be hard, and did feel like I was in over my head at times, but overall, the reaction was positive.

               It broke down like this. First, I had put together an outline to go off of, and submitted it to both Dusten, my stage combat teacher, and Adam, the Chair of the Department and my capstone advisor. That outline looked something like this:

History of the Weapon

Parts of the Weapon

On-Guard

·             Stance

·             How to Hold Weapons

Defenses

·             Rapier Parries – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5a, 7

·             Dagger Parries

·             Blade Paths

Offenses

·             Cuts – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

·              Thrusts

Safety Speech

·             Distance

·             Eye Contact

·             Targeting

·             Casting the Energy

·             CDA or CRAP

Partnering

·             Pairing Up

·             Rapier Parries

·             Dagger Parries

·             Same Side Parries

·             Cross Body Parries

Footwork

·             Pass Forward/Back

·             Advance/Retreat

·             Cross/Slip

·             Thwart – Diagonal/90

·              Lunge

Choreography

·             1 5 2 3 5 2

*Additional Time

·             Parallel, Cross, Reinforced Parries

·             Pris de fer – Croise, Bind, Envelopment

·             Slashes

·             Punto reverse/mandriti

Now, half of this outline only makes sense to me, and trust me, my personal notes were even worse. Now, thought this may look well-rounded and well thought out… only made it through a little over half of it. Why? Multiple reasons.

               First off, I was very limited on time, which I understand given that there’s so little time for this piece to be pulled together. What I thought would be a three-hour block ended up being an hour and a half. Secondly, I had sixteen people in one room, which is a lot whenever there’s only one of me. I had difficulty seeing everyone, and couldn’t give as many corrections because of this and the time limit. There were some focusing problems, which required me to eventually raise my voice. I guess I’d taken for granted the automatic seriousness that most of my colleagues in this field have towards the art form, and will need to emphasis when I do this again that yes, this is all very fun, but there has to be focus and seriousness because we are dealing with a dangerous medium here. Additionally, I was asked some very interesting questions that I’d never heard of or thought of before, many of which I had no answer. I had to boil it down to having them just trust me because this is the way I’ve learned. If I was more experienced and further down the line in my training, I may have been able to deal with these questions, but alas, I am not and this is all a part of the process.

               At the end of the night, I was a little bit worried, and took my concerns to Anjanette. She gave me some basic teaching advice which I will try to take to heart, and assured me that I was doing fine. They had to move on to continue their run of the piece, so I left and began to form a plan for the next time. As of earlier this week, I’ve been given five fighters, so automatically, that makes the rest of the process easier. I was worried because of the challenge of teaching the weapon that I would maybe have to abandon some of my earlier plans, but I think that I can salvage it now that I know who I’m dealing with. I plan to finish the rest of the training, which isn’t much when it gets down to it, then have them play with a stock choreography phrase that was loaned to me by Dusten. Next, I would like to have them do a shavasana exercise that I had originally planned to help them get into the mindset of the fight, and then continue on to start devising the choreography together.

I’m available more next week, so I’m hoping to finally get this thing on its feet. It’s been difficult because of my jobs outside of school, which limit me to coming to only one rehearsal a week. And I feel like I’ve been getting a little disconnected with the project itself, while still focusing on my role within it. I know everyone is stressed and overwhelmed, especially with R&J opening soon, but I’m having my worries that I’m trying to quench by just continually revising my plan. Fingers crossed. Until next time, fight on J