Getting Combative

There is a moment in the twenty-minute scene in which I am acting that requires some minor violence/assault and I offered to the director that I have done some unarmed combat if he wanted input. For those who don't recall, I saw one of the hour-long performances last term in which there was much unsafe stage violence and it was really upsetting for me. So I offered.

Yesterday we had a four-hour rehearsal which was really good although it was exhausting. At that point, I wish it had been a six-hour rehearsal, though, because we were just getting into some good stuff and had to stop. Hopefully we can get back into that energy and awareness again, although often it takes an accumulation of work to reach critical mass...

And we did a little combat. It was weird to try to come up with choreography on the spot that suited the characters, the moment in the piece, and the director's sensibilities. It was also a challenge to get the actors to slow down and to take the emotion out of it so as to not hurt one another. I was thinking of Mary (my fight partner) and wishing she was there so we could demo the choreography safely and responsibly. Hopefully it will work out. It can't be any worse than trying to do it without safety-conscious staging.