Category Archives: magic time

>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hamlet

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I have been blessed with the good fortune to be given random assignments around the theatre directly corresponding to my random array of talents.  This month’s random assignment was as fight director for our first show of the year, Magic Time, which opens tomorrow and runs through the weekend.
The show is about a summer stock company doing a production of Hamlet.  The actors are undergrads with no previous fight or martial arts experience.  They barely knew what a sword was before being handed over to my loving claws.  Over the course of a month, I managed to teach them enough about stage combat to get through my choreographed fight safely.
I don’t have a lot to say about the experience other than I love the theatre, I love swords, and I love when those two loves intersect.  Acting as a mentor for young actors is always a privilege and an honor.  I’ve been where they are.  They come to rehearsal with problems and I know exactly what they’re talking about.  They’re struggling with big life things; why couldn’t I be happy with a normal job, what am I going to do when I graduate college, what the hell is Hamlet trying to say?  There is nothing more satisfying than having answers to (or at least thoughts about) these questions.
I love teaching theatre and I hope I get to do it for the rest of my life. 
With that in mind, here’s a look at how the fight progressed.  I didn’t start videoing them until there was really something to tape, so the initial blunders and foibles have gone unrecorded.  Trust me, that’s likely for the best.
This is the guys a week ago. 
You can hear the pneumatic stapler going in the background as well as my commentary.  At this point, the boys were still working on remembering their moves more than anything.  There is little to no acting involved and everything you see is pure mechanics.  As a point of reference, I would say that such level of performance is typical for a week out from the show.
It did panic the director though.  After a series of frantic text messages, I convinced him that muscle memory would kick in if the boys put some serious effort into rehearsal.
Not to say “I told him so”, but here they are at their first dress (Monday night).
The fight is about ten times more polished, though the speed is a little fast.  You can barely see the swords so, while it feels like it flows, the audience is left wondering “what the heck just happened?”  As an actor unschooled in the art of stabbing things, this speed feels AWESOME.  It feels real, visceral, adrenaline-filled.  However, it’s very difficult for an outside observer to follow.  Unfortunately, going much slower than this could put them back to half speed (as above).  The trick is to slow things down enough that the audience can follow the fight, but keep them fast enough that it doesn’t look halting.  It is a tough balance to achieve, though it does get easier with experience.  Unfortunately, that was exactly what my boys lacked.
Here they are tonight during final dress, while I’m giving them notes.
You can see that they have slown it down a bit which really works in their favor.  They’ve hit prime “fight time” in this one.  Also note how well they’re taking my notes and, when they do take them how much better they look.  Little tweaks, things like getting the stance right, breathing, dropping your center, make all the difference in a fight.  They make the fight safer, and make it look more polished and professional.  Note especially the head butt sequence.  This will come into play in a moment.
Here they are doing it again tonight after my having given them notes and with some dramatic music which does not really belong there but the sound guy was having fun.
The speed is good, their stances are good, they are remembering to breathe (which I know because they are making vocalizations).  You can tell where they are really concentrating because they go silent, but if they remember to breathe that issue will be alleviated.  The head butt sequence, even though they only adjusted it by about three inches, looks worlds better.  You can hear me note it on the video. 
They’re going to look great when the show opens tomorrow.  I couldn’t be more proud of them.
….and nobody’s gotten stabbed yet!

>Deer in the Headlights

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>Do you ever get to a certain point where you have so much on your plate that you are frozen?  So much to do, limited time in which to do it, and yet the thought of the entire situation stresses you out so much that you just can’t do anything?  Like a deer in the headlights, frozen where you stand, unable to move, unable to think, simply able to worry about all the things that you aren’t doing because you’re expending your mental energy not doing them.

Yea, I hit that point tonight.
It’s not that anything in my life right now is bad or unexciting, it is just that there is so bloody much of it.  It’s spilling over and making me remiss in my blogging.  I am working on so much at once that my mind is too scattered to put together a coherent though much less a coherent blog post.
As a result, I’m writing a list.  I find that list-making helps me get my thoughts together, and, since I haven’t come up with much else to blog about, you’re going to get to read my list.  Here is a list of everything that I need to accomplish this month in the order in which these things occur to me.  Enjoy.
1)    1) Finish the Austen midterm.  This is due October 31st by 9PM, though my professor is merciful and may give me an extension.  It will likely wind up being a 20 page paper rather than a 10 page paper as I am currently 6 pages in and not nearly halfway through everything I want to say.  Hopefully I can have a working draft cranked out by the end of the week so I can start muddling through the editing process.  There will be more blogging on my drafting process, complete with pictures, just not tonight.
2)     2)  Ensure actors don’t stab each other during Magic Time this weekend.  This is going fairly well mostly due to the fact that said actors worked their butts off while I was gone over the weekend after I put the fear of god into them via text message.  Fight looks pretty solid as of tonight, which is a good thing as tomorrow is their final dress.  Still a few tweaks, but those are easy.  Considering that as I was leaving my driveway on Friday there was frantic texting between me and the director concerning the integrity of the fight and the actors’ ability to perform it properly, this is VERY good.  Director thought it might need cuts due to actor misperformance, I assured director that this was the proper flow of things and that after working it until their fingers bled muscle memory would kick in and they’d look great.  Guess who was right?  All I can say is:  phew.
3)     3) Keep up on class reading.  Reading for class is like treading water in the ocean: just when you’re on top of the game, a wave comes by to bury you again.  It never ends.  After a year of this, I thought I was used to the break-neck pace of Graduate English programs and everything that came with them.  What I learned this semester is “used to it” does not mean “unphased by it”.  I’m no longer a fresh-faced newb, but all that means is that I’m more jaded and less likely to let things escape through the cracks of composure.  Can’t let those who are actually fresh-faced newbs know how hard it still is even after practice.
4)      4) PhD aps.  Oh god PhD aps.  My personal statement is a wreck and THAT needs fixing pronto.  I hate writing personal statements.  It’s the net that’s supposed to catch everything the rest of the application let fall.  It’s your last ditch effort to impress the program.  It’s the piece of the ap that programs value the highest.  It’s a boatload of pressure.  “Say something smart and witty that will make us like you and simultaneously explain your previous experience, training and academic work as well as this writing sample… in two pages or less”.  Can someone just…. Do this for me?  It’s not that I don’t like to talk about myself, I’m arrogant enough that the premise of this appeals to my need for self-validation, but this is way too much.  What if they don’t like my tone?  What if I accidentally offend them? What if I forget to say something I really should have said?   What if they just hate people named “Danielle”? 
5)      5) Get the conference paper ready to go.  I don’t even want to talk about this. 
6)      6) Prep for cert at the studio.  I’m up for a raise and a boost in ballroom-dancerly-power in the form of a certification.  This happens in early November and involves a three hour test with fifty seven million dance moves from nine different dances (both lead and follow) as well as technical questions about alignment, footwork, and teaching techniques.  I love to dance, for the most part my body knows how to do it, but being asked questions about the process is intimidating.  Memorizing alignments sucks, thinking about footwork makes my head hurt, and my teaching techniques are probably nothing like what the text book tells me to do.  In short: stressful.  It’s like the Spanish Inquisition of Ballroom…. Without the comfy chair.
7)      7) In-Class presentations.  In my absolutely astounding amount of foresight, I managed to sign up for two out of three of my semesterly-required-in-class-presentations during the window of time in which I have the most other things going on.  I’m giving one Wednesday and one next Tuesday.  Next semester, I’m checking my damned calendar before I sign up for these things.  I am less concerned about the Wednesday presentation as it’s on a secondary source article.  The presentation next Tuesday is on Coleridge and involves outside research and crazy prep.  I love Coleridge, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I know more about him than Joe-literati-shmoe.  Better learn fast.  All I can say is I dug my own grave on this one.
8)      8) Due in for another stack of grading.  I’m hoping they’re as epic as the last papers… though perhaps with a little more forethought put into them.  This may just be my comic relief/escape for a while… don’t have time to see a funny de-stressing movie?  Grade some undergrad papers.  It’s kinda the same thing….. really, have I stooped this low?
9)     9)  Finals.  Everyone keeps asking about final paper topics; students, professors, my mom….  I wish I could plug my ears and sing loudly and tunelessly every time the subject is brought up.  I can’t think about finals until my midterms are done, it’s a Cosmic Truth.  Besides which, I simply have no idea.  None.  No clue.  Dunno.  Come back later, brain busy, can’t work it out now.
….I need someone to buy me a nice bottle of wine and give me a backrub.  Or maybe a beer and a hug.

>Come for the Third, Laertes

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As you may or may not have guessed by now, I have a wide array of sundry random talents.  Usually, these are things I have learned for one of several reasons: a) I had to know it for a job at some point (I’ve had a lot of these); b) I was interested in learning it; c) it was involved in a training program/class that I attended; or d) it seemed like a good idea at the time.
My interest in swords, weapons and combat falls into column b and, I can’t be happier to say, is slowly leaking into column a.  As I announced earlier this month, I have been given the responsibility of acting as fight director for our production of Magic Time at the theatre.
Magic Time is a play about a summer stock company doing Hamlet.  The infamous Hamlet duel is enacted three times during the production.  This is exciting to me for several reasons, not the least of which being the duel from Hamlet is one of the most interesting and challenging pieces a fight director can have land on her plate. 
Everyone knows that there is a duel in Hamlet.  People come to see Hamlet expecting a brilliant display of swordsmanship at the end of the show, resulting in the deaths of the (remaining) main characters.  The characters involved in the Hamlet duel are both experienced, trained swordsmen.  The duel has got to look good or it betrays audience expectation and the spirit of the production.
Neither of the actors involved in my duel have any background in swordplay, martial arts, or dance.  This should be fun.
Luckily, we have some time.  The production doesn’t go up until the end of October so, with some diligence, I think I’ll be able to put something together that doesn’t look half bad.  That is, of course, if said actors come to me with the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Inexperience I can handle, lack of hand/eye co-ordination may be a killer (in this instance, quite literally…)
In addition to the physical demands of the Hamlet duel, there are also some textual complications.  Here is the text which is spoken during the infamous fight:
Hamlet
Come on sir.
Laertes
Come on sir. [ They play.]
Hamlet
One.
Laertes
No.
Hamlet
Iudgement.
Osrick
A hit, a very palpable hit.
Laertes
Well: againe.
…
Hamlet
Come: Another hit; what say you?
Laertes
A touch, a touch, I do confesse.
King
Our Sonne shall win.
…
Hamlet
Come for the third.
Laertes, you but dally,
I pray you passe with your best violence,
I am affear’d you make a wanton of me.
Laertes
Say you so? Come on. [ Play.]
Osrick
Nothing neither way.
Laertes
Haue at you now.
 [In scuffling they change Rapiers.]
King
Part them, they are incens’d.
(Hamlet 3739-3779)
Since the pearls and Gertrude’s death are a complication unto themselves (and don’t actually matter for my staging since they’re cut from Magic Time), I have omitted them from this passage.  What I am always left wondering is several things:
Laertes is a trained French fencer.  He attend academy there.  His form should be top-notch. Osrick admits to Hamlet before the duel that Laertes will likely best him.  However, we know from this passage that Hamlet is really kicking the snot out of Laertes.  Laertes shouldn’t look like a bad fencer, Hamlet just has to be a better fencer.  Like trying to have a good singer sing off-key, this is much more challenging than it would seem.
In addition, there are several embedded stage directions in the fight.  Hamlet hit Laertes.  It is a hit so striking that Osrick famously pronounces it as “a very palpable hit”.  However, it is a hit that Laertes at first protests.  Is this because Laertes is cheating, or because the hit was subtle enough for him to have missed it despite its pronouncement to the assembly?  The second hit Laertes admits to.  After a little smack-talk from Hamlet, the scuffle begins again and Osrick pronounces “nothing neither way”.  This asserts that, despite aforementioned scuffle containing a close call, neither fencer has actually connected.  Then, of course, occurs the famous swap-n-swipe.  Hamlet takes possession of Laertes’ poisoned rapier, but not before Laertes manages to wound Hamlet.  Hamlet then wounds Laertes.  This series of events we are brought into assurance of not only because both Hamlet and Laertes die, but also because of Horatio’s pronouncement several lines later “they bleed on both sides”.  Finally, the duelers become frantic enough that the King himself orders they are parted due to being “incens’d”.
Whew.  That’s a lot going on in a fight. 
Keep in mind as well that most fight directors get a mere few hours with their actors to choreograph this duel.  I’m in the fortunate position to have a little more time than that, but I also have a little less experience than some of the real pros out there.
Shakespeare’s actors would have had a very different attitude about onstage violence.  The average rehearsal period for a show in Shakespeare’s time was four days.  As your mind boggles about that, remember that Shakespeare’s actors were also accomplished fencers.  Fencing and dancing, two of the so-called “noble arts”, were high priorities for actors to learn and be proficient at.  They are elements frequently used in period shows, and elements that had greater meaning in the late fifteen hundreds than they do today.  Rather than being mere leisure activities, they were ways of life.  The average man walking down the street likely had a weapon on him and was also likely called upon to use that weapon several times in his life.  Remember that dueling (despite being illegal) was non an uncommon way to resolve disputes amongst the middle and noble classes.  Indeed, Christopher Marlowe died in a duel.  So four day to slap together a sword fight was really no big sweat for an Elizabethan actor.
Despite cultural differences, this does put things in perspective.  If they did it in four days, I should be able to whip these guys into shape in six weeks.
First fight call is tomorrow morning.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

>By all these lovely tokens, September days are here…

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I love autumn.  Every last bit of it.  The leaves change color, the smell of woodsmoke, apple cider and pumpkin is thick in the air, I get to go office supply shopping (don’t judge, I love office supply shopping), boots and adorable denim jackets are seasonal attire once more, and the spirit for my favorite holiday ensues.  The first whiffs of fall make me tingle with anticipation and here in New Jersey the season began to peek its nose around the corner this very week.
Maybe it’s because my life centers so much around school, but the autumn is always a time of new things to me.  September is exciting because I get new notebooks, new classes, new textbooks, new research, new schedule, new back-to-school clothes, new projects… what a whirlwind of change.  This year is looking particularly scary and wonderful due to several factors.  So today, rather than my traditional blogy narrative, I’d like to take a moment to write an autumn-themed list of various and sundry things that have been and will be whirling into (and out of) my life in the past/next few weeks on the harvest wind.
*I’m down to one job!  Briefly, albeit, before work at the theatre starts up again.  My last day at the archive was yesterday.  The life of an archivist is one that I had never thought to live and, I can say with some certainty, it’s much tougher than anyone would have imagined.  Digging, piling, compiling, categorizing, counting, labeling, all the while being paranoid of mouse droppings and assorted pests which may or may not be skittering out of assembled boxes at any given time.  I walked out of the archive every day feeling like I needed to be decontaminated rather than cleaned.  Coated in dust, sneezing, eyes watering, I also felt satisfied.  It was an Indiana-Jones style hunt through paths unblazed by second-generation human knowledge.  That was as exciting as it sounds.  The feeling that around any corner could be waiting a surprise find to change the face of knowledge, the idea that I was doing something worthwhile, and the notion that (while on a small scale) I was becoming an expert in a previously undiscovered area of  comprehension made this perhaps the most fulfilling job I have ever worked.  I would not hesitate to do it again.  That and the pay was good.
*PhD application process begins (seriously) now.  I don’t want to speak on this at great length just now because a) I will likely be speaking on it in future blog entries and b) because it scares me.  More than a little.  The acceptance process into any given program is so arbitrary that, while I know I have done everything right and that I am a prime candidate for my programs, I can’t help but dwell upon the great and imminent coin flip that determines the rest of my life.  This entire ordeal is equally strange because it feels like college applications all over again.  You know, that time in your life that you thought was done but (apparently) is not.  That great burgeoning uncertainty as you stand on the precipice of your future waiting to jump but uncertain which direction will be your best bet for surviving the fall (sorry, can’t resist a pun…).  Looking over the abyss, teetering on the edge, dipping my toe into its unknown depths, I think fear is a natural reaction.  I keep trying to remind myself that fear is an acronym for “False Expectations Appearing Real”, but this seems to only deepen the illusions rather than make them disperse.  I’m fairly certain that I am approaching a jittering, uneasy serenity about this entire process, which, really, is all you can do.  Lay back, enjoy the ride, and accept that for a time you’ll just have no clue.  Yup.  Blissful Cluelessness here I come…
*I cleaned my bookshelf last night of last semester’s textbooks (with the exception of those on the Master’s Reading Exam List which got re-located to a separate shelf) and placed upon it instead this semester’s new acquisitions.  Somehow, this makes everything feel more real.  My first class is on Wednesday, I just completed my first academic reading for the semester, and my first syllabus is printed and ready to go.  I am pumped.  I’m already thinking about paper topics and possible conference papers… though this likely means that I’ll have to finally get around to reading Judith Butler.
*This year at the theatre seems to be Shakespeare year and I can’t be more thrilled.  Two of our four annual productions will be Shakespeare-themed!  In the fall, we will be doing a production of Magic Time by James Sherman followed by a Spring production of Twelfth Night.  Twelfth Night is definitely one of my favorites and a show that I’ve had an intimate knowledge of for some years.  Featuring the best Shakespearean clown (in my opinion), one of the best heroines, and (drum roll please) a comic fight scene, this play really has just about everything that a novice Shakespeare Company would need or want.  Granted, we’re not a Shakespeare company, but we do have some pretty amazing people who work on these things.  Stay tuned for more info on Twelfth Night.  In the meantime, I have been asked to work on Magic Time as the fight director.  Magic Time is a show about a Company producing Hamlet.  Naturally, the duel scene is enacted several times in the script.  Which means that I get to live every fight director’s dream and do the infamous duel.  I’ve started kicking around ideas (it’s harder than you think to kick ideas with a sword when you don’t even know who your actors are and if they have any scrap of hand/eye co-ordination).  Will our heroine be able to pull through?  Will she kill and/or gravely injure any actors in the process?  Will the fight look good and not like a clay-mation Errol-Flynn wanna-be sequence?  Only time will tell….
*I am about 98% certain that I will again be grading for the Best Professor in the World (who may or may not be reading this right now).  Pending financial disaster in the Department or a lack of registration for Eighteenth Century British Lit (part I), I will definitely be on board as a paper monkey for Dr. Lynch.  I could not be more thrilled.  This man has been (and will continue to be) an inspiration and mentor to me as I pick my way through academia.  I am waiting with bated breathe for his Spring Graduate Seminar in Gothic…. Oh, and for those of you who have had need of (and will need in the future) a GREAT style guide written to be useful, readable, and fun, check out his.  It is complete with historical tid-bits and lovingly annotated grammar rules and regulations from a man who knows his stuff.  That and it’s online for free (though it does come in paper version, which, let’s face it, is totally worth having).
*I want to go apple picking and eat pumpkin everything.  I understand that the weather will be kicking back up to eighty degrees this weekend as summer shows us the strength of its death throes.  I hope that this won’t foil my perky autumn-inspired mood…