シェイクスピアの舞台戦闘

This 3 part class goes in-depth into how to train for, rehearse, and perform a fight from a Shakespeare play. We'll cover fight safety, footwork, proper cuing, and selling the fight. I will also contextualize the fights in "Romeo and Juliet," (the play with more fights than any other in Shakespeare), to explain how the Elizabethans felt about violence, and what this play says about violence in our own time. 

The class will mostly be up-on- your feet demonstrations with me in front of the camera and the students mirroring my movements, but there will also be handouts, websites, and video presentations to help supplement what I say. 

Class Structure:
1: Proper Footwork/ Cuts
We’ll cover proper stance and en guard positions
We’ll practice advances and retreats
We’ll show you how to do a lunge and the footwork involved.
We’ll incorporate advances and retreats with simple high-low parries and cuts.


2. Week of March 26th: Parries and other defensive moves
We’ll cover the 6 basic parries to stop an attacker’s blade.
We’ll also cover ducking, avoidances, and 

3. Fight Rehearsal 
We’ll assign roles for the fight between Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo in Act III I of "Romeo and Juliet." The students will then get a fight 
script, and you can practice the fight at ½ speed. We will also explain the concept of Cue-Reaction-Action: A basic stage combat principle/process used to achieve a safe and dramatically effective sequence of events. 
We will discuss the importance of eye contact and cuing to ensure that the combatants know what to expect at all times.