Violence Design Lab Podcast

+ a Special Announcement about the Podcast

Sometimes as violence designers we think the fights we've designed are fantastic, but they seem much less amazing in performance. Why does that happen? In this week's episode we talk about watching fights from the audience's perspective, why it can be artistically dangerous to see your fights only from the "first-person-shooter" perspective, and how we can develop our internal "audience eye" to monitor our design.

While we all agree that comedy should be funny and dramatic scenes should be serious, how does the tone of the scene change your design? Does your stage combat technique change for a comic scene? Should it? And why do more actors hurt themselves in comic violence than the serious stuff? All this more, on episode #38!

In Episode #37 of the Violence Design Lab podcast, we're talking about designing fights that coordinate with musical underscoring. Whether you are literally choreographing beat by beat to the score or you need to fill a musical interlude with a fight of a specific duration, we'll discuss some design challenges and solutions to make your violence play along in harmony. Contents: 2:55   The Challenges of Designing Fights to Match the Music 8:57   Managing Directorial Expectations 12:03  Tips to Successfully Design to Music

As Halloween approaches, stage blood makes its brief annual appearance into the general public consciousness. On Episode #36 of the Violence Design Lab podcast, we'll go beyond zombie wounds and vampire fangs and talk about the right ways to work with stage blood to place you a cut above the trick-or-treat amateur.

Episode #35 of the Violence Design Lab podcast is aimed squarely at playwrights and screenwriters. How do you write a good fight scene? How do you make sure that your vision of the fight is the one that gets put on stage? Who controls the choreography? Do you want to win that fight? Stay tuned! Contents: 2:42    Purpose of the Violence (Playwright's perspective) 10:39  Purpose of the Violence (Character's perspective) 19:38  Stage directions vs. Fight choreography 25:12   How to Get the Fight You Want  

On Episode #34 of the Violence Design Lab podcast, we're talking about working on stages that aren't a traditional proscenium. What happens when the audience is on two sides of the stage? Or three? Or they have you surrounded? Let's talk about which stage combat illusions work, which ones don't, and which ones can be tweaked to still be effective. Plus, we'll go beyond just technique and talk about how the shape of the stage can help shape your design.  

Today I examine "noble heroes" and "dastardly villains," or honorable and dishonorable characters. What defines them? What are the rules that society uses to decide if a fight is "fair" or "honorable" and how can you use that in your design? Listen in to find out... 3:27     What is Honor? 8:35     The Rules of Engagement: What Triggers allow violence to be used? Who are acceptable Targets of violence? What Types of violence are permissible? What Tactics are not an option? 24:01     Basic Truisms about honorable characters 27:51     The situational nature of honor during fighting  

Historical Drama: doesn't every Shakespeare play with fights fall into that category? Or everything set before 1980? What about Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings? Aren't they in that style too? Let's talk about this common--and commonly mischoreographed--style, and figure out what to include, what to steer clear of...and how to know when you're in a historical drama in the first place! This week's episode is the second in a series on style: designing fights in particular ways to match a specific genre or to evoke a certain tone. Each iteration in the series will break down the specific elements that define the style and give you concrete, actionable ways to incorporate these elements into your choreography. I will also discuss the reasons that make the style challenging and how using it can affect the logistics of your production process, and finally, I'll wrap up with a discussion of the general "feel" or tone that the style evokes in performance. Contents 0:58   Define "Historical Drama" 4:52   The Elements of the Style 15:34 Why Is This Style Challenging? 26:49 What Tone Does This Style Create? 27:53 Takeaways

This week, we examine how to customize the way a character fights to match the level of weapon/fight training or martial experience appropriate to their background in the world of the play. That meek biochemist shouldn't fight the same way that Rambo does, and you need to adapt your choreography to remain true to their character story and demonstrate their relative skill to the audience. Here are some tips for creating untrained fighters, normal or "realistically" trained fighters, and superheroic, legendary, or "super-trained fighters!   Contents 2:15  Introduction 4:19  The Problem with Standardized Moves 6:26  Creating Untrained Characters 13:54 Creating Realistically Trained Characters 19:08 Creating "Super-trained" Characters  

This week's episode is the first in a series on style: designing fights in particular ways to match a specific genre or to evoke a certain tone. Each iteration in the series will break down the specific elements that define the style and give you concrete, actionable ways to incorporate these elements into your choreography. I will also discuss the reasons that make the style challenging and how using it can affect the logistics of your production process, and finally, I'll wrap up with a discussion of the general "feel" or tone that the style evokes in performance. This week. I'm examining classic Hollywood Swashbuckling: the flashy, dashing swordplay of the likes of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. What makes swash tick? What are some of the classic tropes? And wait...don't I HATE swash?? Contents 3:24 Define "Swashbuckling" 4:11 The Elements of the Swash Style 15:30 Why Is This Style Challenging? 18:45 What Tone Does This Style Create?

This episode was inspired by a listener who wrote in about the challenge of choreographing fights alone. It can be difficult to imagine both sides or multiple opponents when you design without the benefit of a fight partner on the other end of the sword. How do you keep everything straight? And because your fight isn't "tested" with a partner, how do you know it will work when you give it to the actors in rehearsal?

Unlike other theatrical design specialties such as lighting, sets, or costumes, violence design suffers from a lack of formal instruction and training available to those who would pursue a career in fight choreography. The potential designer often has little recourse other than to take the "sink or swim" approach in trying to transition from a performer who knows stage combat to a designer responsible for conceiving, teaching, and staging the violence for an entire show. Internships are a great way to bridge the gap. This week, I have a panel of people with personal experiences with apprenticeship: Victor Bayona, who began as an apprentice for R&D Choreography in Chicago (and went on to become a partner in the company), Chloe Baldwin, an intern who trained under Victor and is now working as a designer on her own, and Almanya Narula and Nicolas Cabrera, who are currently interning with R&D. It was a great interview, with lots of information for both potential apprentices and for experienced designers considering become mentors to train the next generation.

We are used to training our bodies to do physical tasks like stage combat or sports, but have you ever considered how much your brain is working when you fight? This week's episode examines how our brain's processing capacity can be overwhelmed by all the information bombarding it during each moment of a fight, and how you can "automate" some tasks to lessen the load. Plus, what to do with the cognitive dissonance of learning when new theories or techniques challenge what you've always thought or done in the past; when is it acceptable to question your teachers or the conventional wisdom of your craft?

The first of a series about training actors to do stage combat. The first questions we need to address: SHOULD all actors train to perform violence? The answer is not as cut-and-dried as you might think, especially coming from a violence designer. In the episode, I discuss reasons FOR and AGAINST actors training in stage combat. Knowing these arguments will help you better understand your potential students, what they need, and who to target for your classes.

Many of us find ourselves designing theatrical violence for high school or middle school productions or teaching stage combat classes to theatre programs that focus on younger performers. Or perhaps the play you're designing has a child involved in the violence. We quickly discover that working with younger fighters can be a very different experience than designing with adults. In this episode, I discuss 4 of the major challenges dealing with this age group, give you six teaching strategies for working with them more effectively, and five tips to help you design violence that best showcases the younger performer.

You've done your audition and gotten a callback! But the director tells you that not only will you be reading from the script to see how you work with specific characters, but that there will be a fight callback to assess your stage combat skills as well! What's that going to be like? This week's episode is here to relieve your anxiety, explain the process and give you some easy to remember and achievable tips to help you rock your fight callback and maybe land that fighting role! Also, I look at the callback from the other side of the audition table: as a violence designer. I explain my method for preparing for fight callbacks, running them, and getting the most out of them afterward.

Today, let's discuss the dramatic work that your fights should be doing. Fights do more than simply move the plot along. Fights should also: 1) reinforce the setting and underscore the tone, 2) reveal character 3) cast the future of the play into doubt. I also cover how to use your fights to reinforce the characters we expect to see (Physicalization of Personality) and how to break those expectations for effect (the Dramatic Change), as well as how to create and maintain dramatic tension, and more! You didn't think fights were just a string of cool stage combat moves, did you?

Today on episode #22 of the Violence Design Lab podcast, I'm discussing a book I think every violence designer and fight choreographer needs on their bookshelf: Meditations on Violence by Sergeant Rory Miller. I consider it a foundational work for those on our field, so I want to make sure you're up to speed on it. This book is a great asset and if you haven't read it, there's an Amazon link at the bottom of the show notes to help you find it. I don't claim that everything Miller says is gospel truth (and even he tells you to disregard things that fly in the face of your experience or common sense), but the book is worth the price just for the thoughts about the nature of violence that I guarantee it will provoke in you. And after all, thinking about the deeper levels of violence, its motivations, its goals, its execution, and its aftereffects, this is what will separate your work from the run-of-the-mill fight choreographer.

Today I want to talk about something I never learned in a stage combat workshop or a college theatre class. In fact, it took over twenty years for me to really understand it. What is this mystery topic? Working with fighters who are middle-aged or older. Now that I'm a few months shy of 50, I have a whole different perspective on this issue compared to when I was twenty. So pull up a chair, whippersnapper: let me tell you a story. In this episode I give you seven tips for working with older actors who fight, some suggestions on how to help them become better fighters, and tips for how to tailor your choreography for older characters who are still fighting...after all: there's a reason that a fighting character would survive to old age!

Start designing fights for productions, and the need for weapons quickly arises. Where do those come from? The theatre? A rental house? From you? Today I talk with R&D Choreography founder Richard Gilbert about the ways a weapon inventory can benefit the working violence designer. We discuss some strategies for building up your stockpile, how to make it work for you, how to track where your weapons are and when they should be back.

The topic for episode #19 of the Violence Design Lab podcast comes to us from a listener in the U.K. who wanted to know my approach to incorporating the story elements of a script into the fight choreography that I eventually give to the actors. It's a great question, and it's nice to focus in on a smaller scale after a few large-concept episodes like my series on melees. If you choreograph fights for a class or an exhibition or for fun but without a pre-written script, your options—your artistic canvas, if you will—are wide open. You can create anything you like, limited only by your available weapons and your athletic skill. The world is your oyster. Violence in a play script or screenplay, however, does NOT happen in a vacuum. It's not a blank canvas. There is highly specific work it must do in the script, and certain elements that must be included. This is the place to start planning your choreography—with what I call the Essential Elements....

This week I had the honor and privilege of chatting with Todd Campbell, Fight Master with Fight Directors Canada. He and I dove into some strategies on training actors to fight--not only in traditional stage combat but also in historical styles. He explains the tiered training system of the FDC, and how HEMA research benefits and augments the kind of fights we can do on stage. It's a great interview and I learned a lot: give it a listen!

In this episode, we're covering the second half of our discussion on melees! Today we get down to brass tacks: what format are you using to tell this story, what are the two major styles of melees, what are feature fights and chaos moments, and how Twyla Tharp taught me to choreography battle scenes!

Today on the Violence Design Lab podcast, we're talkin' melees! That's right: Group fights! Rumbles! Battles! How to define them, how to negotiate them with directors, and most of all, how the heck to design them! This is Part One of a two-part series.

They say in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there always is. In a competitive environment, you probably won't see that obvious, single-intention attack like the treatise seems to show and you drilled so often. But if you're paying attention to what the drill is really teaching you, after all the false starts and feints aborted attacks are done and you find yourself in that crossing, you'll realize, "Hey, I know what to do here—it's just like the drill!" On stage, knowing what drills are really teaching will allow you to know WHY a particular action is safe, and to keep it that way even though you bury all those safeties under the character emotions and all the distractions meant to hide the cooperation from the audience. This week, let's discuss how a drill you do in class or a technique you're learning from a treatise will look very different in a bout against an opponent in a bout...and how it should look different than what you put on stage. Different, and yet still theoretically the same. How is this possible? Stay with me. Out swords and to work withal!

Today on the show, I'm starting a series breaking down my preferred design aesthetic to give you a better sense of where I'm coming from artistically. Specifically, I'll be talking about my distaste for perceived cooperation between fighters, and how Sir Isaac Newton helped me learn to break out of that trap and to design better fights. Interested? Then out swords and to work withal!

Today on the show, we're talking about things that theatre people wish HEMA practitioners knew about stage combat and things HEMA folks wish stage combatants understood about historical fighting. Notice I say "we" are talking about this, because I'm joined today by Allen Johnson, HEMA-ist, violence designer, stunt performer and produced screenwriter, who lends his unique perspective to the conversation. We also talk about the time and place for the Hollywood style, how historical techniques may have to change to look right on camera, and more!

"Stage combat is bollocks! It doesn't look like real sword fighting at all!" "Theatre doesn't have to show reality! We're telling stories!" These two perspectives often clash when fencers or students of Historical European Martial Arts talk about theatrical fighting with stage combat people. But the "realism" mindset and the "drama" perspective don't have to be mutually exclusive. This episode explores the root causes of some of the friction and suggests ways both sides can compromise for everyone's benefit. For more violence design discussion, tips, and tutorials, visit www.violencedesignlab.com For a full transcript of this episode, go to www.patreon.com/violencedesignlab.com

It's no secret that my career focus has always been designing fights for theatre rather than teaching any kind of competitive sword play. But the act of telling fight stories isn't just for theatre artists: it has a broader application for martial artists as well. In this episode, I call attention to the benefits of thinking of drills and even bouts in terms of story, and I outline the "5-S" process for getting the maximum training benefit from every action you fight. Check out the episode to hear how to: 1 State the Story. 2 Specify the Signposts. 3 Stage the Scene. 4 Switch the Sides. 5 Subvert the Success. I think you'll find that this kind of intensive, focused training will develop your opponent observation and reaction skills more quickly and in a less haphazard fashion than just bouting alone. And a side benefit? You'll also be exercising your fight choreography muscles, and maybe you too can expand your horizons into the world of theatrical violence design! For a full transcript, please visit my Patreon site at www.patreon.com/violencedesignlab and become a patron!

Fühlen (or sentiment de fer) is the ability to sense an opponent's intention using the various pressures transmitted through the weapons during blade contact. It's the feeling when the swords cross and you can tell if your opponent is hard or soft in the bind, which helps determine your response and next action. Fühlen is important in a real fight, which means it should be visually represented in well-designed staged fights, AND YET it's nigh impossible to express through choreography. So what do we do? Listen to this episode to hear about the secret weapon you have in every fight that will allow you to show fühlen in action to an audience...

This is the final installment in a three-part series called Crafting a Compelling Fight. In this episode, I go in-depth about stage directions. Those little italicized instructions in a script are vital to the violence designer, but you have to understand where they come from, what information they provide, and where they are in the text in order to follow them intelligently or to deviate from them for artistic effect.

There have been times when I'm starting to plan the choreography for a fight that I draw a blank. Either no choreography is flowing or what I'm coming up with is boring and lifeless. Maybe you've had the same experience. Sometimes, this is a perspective problem: if you only see the characters as "two guys with swords who want to kill each other," you're going to have a hard time figuring out where to start or what the story of the fight is. In this episode I give you four ways to Find the Difference-- four ways to figure out how your characters are different from each other and how to highlight that difference throughout the fight. Finding the Difference helps you understand the relationship between the characters better and it helps the audience be able to differentiate them in their minds. Plus, listen to the end of the episode to hear how to get the handy reference sheet.

Kicking off a three-part series on Creating the Compelling Fight. In this first installment, I interview Stuart (StuMac) Macdonald and Marcus Byron of the Glen Lachlann Estate College of Arms in Melbourne, Australia. These guys were amazing, and the design philosophy they've developed is so helpful to create a fight that incorporates not only good technique and the story requirements of the play, but also the specific physicality and artistic choices that the actor brings to the equation, and even to imbuing the weapons with a character of their own! You won't want to miss this.

I always think it looks better when characters fight with sharp swords on stage, and I work with the actors to sharpen them beforehand. I hate it when they wave around hunks of blunt steel that they know aren't dangerous. The audience can tell. Now before I continue, my lawyers are telling me that I can't go around telling people to use sharpened props on stage, so I better clarify what I'm talking about post-haste. I'm really talking here about how to help actors to portray characters in a world where swords are sharp and weapons are serious and dangerous. Too often, actors handle or react to weapons, especially swords, in a way they would never do in the real world. And if the characters don't seem to perceive the weapons as dangerous, the audience won't either.

America has a weird relationship with actors. We judge them on their looks, then call them vain. We say actors in Hollywood get paid way too much, then we tell struggling actors to "get a real job." We say, "Anyone can act," but then we get sweaty palms at the idea of speaking in front of crowd of 20 people. Actors get labeled emotional, air-headed, clueless. And sure, a few of them are....just like the rest of us. But actors are amazing people. And their craft is one of the most difficult to do well because it's so subjective. It's not like engineering, with numbers you can plug in to a formula. It's not working with wood you can saw and fit to length. It's literally all based in interpersonal relationships, emotion, and empathy...some of the hardest things to quantify in the world, next to the weather. Because some of you are approaching design without starting out as an actor yourself, I want to give you 5 tips for working with actors to smooth out the process and make less stress for them and for you.

If the theatre community doesn't want to change from within, let's change it from the outside. I'm calling on HEMA scholars to stop grumbling in their masks about unrealistic sword work on stage and film and start doing something to change it. Because you, ladies and gentlemen, have skills that the entertainment industry needs, whether they know it or not. I want to work with you to reinvent stage combat as we know it.

If you are in a show right now where you perform any kind of stage combat, I want you to stop what you're doing and go print out the Instinctive Fight Acting reminder card that is this week's bonus content. Seriously. Print it out, take it to the theatre with you and tape it on your makeup mirror, because you are going to use it to make tonight's fight rock. And you'll do it without changing one iota of your choreography....

If you direct enough plays, you'll eventually choose one that includes violence. It comes up more often than you might think, because people in my line of work use the term to include not only times when one character is actively trying to harm another, but any moment of physical business that may pose a safety risk for the actor: someone falls out of bed, or faints, or trips on an electrical cord and pulls down a lamp, etc. Some plays have obvious fight scenes, like Hamlet or Extremities, while others may only include a single punch or a slap or a moment of struggle. Then there are the "sleeper" shows, especially comedies, that don't seem to need a violence designer until the actors start getting banged up. I The big question, then is: Do You Need Help to Stage the Violence?

Since this is the first episode of the podcast, my first topic relates to beginning your career in fight choreography. Specifically: When Can I Transition From a Fighter to a Violence Designer? It can be a really awkward time on your artistic journey, because often there's not a clear jumping off point to get to that next level. Maybe you've had some stage combat training and you've done pretty well in your classes and workshops, Maybe you've acted in several shows where you performed fights that rocked it and you really "get" playing violent characters. But you know you're nowhere near the wealth of information and experience that your teachers and mentors are. So when is it time to take the plunge?