Class Experience
This 7 part class is geared towards students who have taken my class or some other combat class in the past. We will go 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:
Week of March 5th: Background on swords/ sword crafts
-We will learn about the history of swords from ancient military weapons, to the instrument of private dueling. We’ll also cover the culture of duelling that permeated 17th century Europe, as well as the text of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The class will conclude with me instructing the kids how to make a practice sword themselves!
Week of March 12: Proper Footwork/ Stances For Sword Combat-
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.
Week of March 19th : Cuts, Swipes, and Thrusts
You’ll learn the lines of attack and defense
You’ll learn the proper way to hold a blade and deliver realistic-looking cuts.
Learn how to thrust (online and offline)
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
Week April 2nd: Fight Rehearsal 1
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.
Week of April 9th: Fight practice 2
- We'll go through a warm-up fight drill
- We'll rehearse the fight at 3/4 speed to make sure you understand all the moves.
- We'll Incorporate acting into the fight- selling pain, anger, and fear. Use distance to show character relationships.
Week of April 16th: Final Fight performance
- We'll go through a warm-up fight drill again
- We'll rehearse the fight at 3/4 speed again to make sure you understand all the moves.
-We’ll pretend we’re doing this fight for an audience at ¾ speed. If need be, I’ll play one of the aggressors and you can do the fight pretending I’m in the room with you.
At the end of class, I’ll show you a similar fight from my production of Romeo and Juliet and we’ll discuss the differences between our fight and the one I showed the students. Finally, we will discuss the way Shakespeare portrays violence in the play and its relevance in our world.
Click here to register for this course:
Get $10 off my class "Shakespearean Stage Combat" with coupon code HTHES13UPF10 until Apr 24, 2022. Get started at https://outschool.com/classes/shakespearean-stage-combat-TyjzafsK and enter the coupon code at checkout.
The Shakespearean Student 