Repeating yourself can be annoying. To remain calm and focused takes mental toughness, but the repetition itself builds your mental resilience. Do it again with the aim to improve. It’s especially tough for actors who also have to pretend to be agitated but have the focus and endurance to repeat an emotional scene again and […]
Fight Directors Canada sets the standards for stage combat in this country, just like the Society of American Fight Directors does in the U.S.A. and the British Academy of Dramatic Combat does in the U.K. What are those standards, and what do the levels mean? I hope to answer all your questions on FDC Certification […]
Are you left-handed in a world of right-handed sword fighters? Perhaps like Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, you are right-handed but cast to play a left-handed character. Should your stage combat training include ambidexterity? Why Are You Smiling? I just read this interview with Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) about who […]
Our Action Acting course starts on Monday, 15 June, so you’ve got just over a week a few days left to register. It will run Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm for two weeks. On the last day, there’s a written test and a performance test. There are three weapon systems and you’ll perform […]
Published in 2001, Sword Fighting: A Manual for Actors and Directors is one of the best-selling books on stage combat. With choreographed sequences from several different sword styles, it gives the actor a direct way to jump in to sword fighting. However, it has some critical problems that make it tough to recommend. The pair […]
In the article linked below, Paul Dennhardt, a theatre professor at the College of Fine Arts of Illinois State University, explains important aspects of stage combat that should be understood by everyone in theatre by now. Sadly, most productions still don’t know where to begin with a sword fight, or what the process involves, but […]
What does it mean to make acting decisions in a fight scene? Being angry or frightened or stone-faced during a sequence of moves is perhaps the only thing you can maintain besides the accuracy of your fight choreography. However, there is so much more you can do before the first move and between phrases when […]