Finally found...

...a reputable dealer in nonfiring replicas that isn't charging an arm and a leg for good quality "Law Enforcement blue" pistol replicas. Obviously, bright blue plastic pistols aren't suitable for stage performance (unless you're playing "Mercenary Smurf" in Smurf The Musical - which I pray never happens).

However, rather than a skittish performer having to handle a blank firing piece for the first time on stage, or in rehearsals, the actor can get used to handling and hefting a weapon with a steel interior coated in detail molded plastic. The worst they could do is drop it on their toe.

Being bright blue, they're hard to miss, so as a fight choreographer and/or props coordinator it also helps to be able to track the "weapon" with one eye while still being able to take in the action of the sequence. I can take corrective notes about how the pistol is being drawn, held or aimed much easier without having to focus solely on it during a moment.

In additon using the trainer in the rehearsal period spares the "good" blank firing pieces from being damaged by a novice user who drops them, throws them, or does generally foolish things like actually pistol-whipping someone.

So, we're continually building our arsenal of training and stage safe knives as well as guns! Hooray!

It's like magic. No really, it could be.

I’ve written earlier about illusion and misdirection on stage. After all, what is stage combat based in, if not illusion and misdirection. Hell, all theater is illusion, and the willing suspension of disbelief. But – there is something inherently different about watching a magician or illusionist perform as opposed to watching a play. This got me thinking about stage and street magic in general, and wondering why with all the incredible illusions available to the general buying public (don’t believe me?) more integration between traditional magic and traditional theater hasn’t taken place?

Performing a magic act is, to my understanding, an act based initially on spectacle. The performer is asking the audience to view an event and be astonished, perhaps disturbed, or in the case of that Criss Angel guy, Mindfreaked! Whatever the hell that means. I’ve never been mindfreaked without generous application of whiskey, and golly, do I know how to make that disappear. Magic!

Anyway, magic performance is inherently based in spectacle, but the best performers seem to downplay the suspension of disbelief. In fact, a good magician seems to say, “I defy you NOT to believe what you’ve seen.” Theater – that is, good theater, attempts the same thing. An audience views an event on stage, and is moved to a different emotional state. They laugh, they cry, or if you’re watching a Tim Errickson show, sometimes both, at the same time, with a little drooling. And all while becoming a better person, because Tim can do that. Hi, Tim. Tim, for the not Tim person reading this, is a director here in NYC.

I digress – where magic tries to stomp the willing suspension of disbelief flat, we are, as performers, complacent with asking our theater audiences to suspend their disbelief more and more. Yet despite the similar motives and hoped for results of both general types of performance, there seems to be a strange division between magic and theater. Stage and street magic employ very sophisticated skills and technology in a seamless manner (in different ways) to defy apparent reality right in front of an audience. I think the aim of the best magicians is not to terrify their audiences, but rather challenge them to question their perceptions and what they know and accept as truth. I would argue that good theater does the same. So, a live theatrical production that also employs some killer “magic” might be quite an amazing thing to experience.

I’m probably not thinking anything that hasn’t been explored before, but I feel like this may be a way for me to advance the nature of fight choreography. Amping up the visuals and emotional content of what audiences experience by adding a deeper level of illusion. Paradoxically that deeper illusion may illuminate deeper truths.

That’s mostly mouse farts however (and believe me - mouse farts is nothing) if I don’t suggest and employ something more vibrant. For that, I’m looking at a specific piece of magic… an illusion by mastermind Sean Fields called “Sick.” In short, I believe it offers the potential for realistic knife wounds in real time, and the attendant blood and gore might just change people’s perception of what a stabbing or slashing is like. It’s not clean. It’s not neat. It’s awful, horrific, gut wrenching to see and profoundly gross. Some of those links are pretty disturbing folks. Sorry.

If a work of theater dares to present an act of violence, we should endeavor to bring as much truth to that moment as possible, and there are some magicians out there who have already done all the work for us. Maybe it’s time to start bridging the gap a little.

Desangut... no.

I've just heard the official word from Cherusker Messer GmbH. It is a sad collection of words:

The Desangut will not be produced. No new knife. Poop.

On the other hand, they are going to send me 4 other existing models for the price of the two knives I preordered. So, it's still kind of a win.

I guess.

Poop.

Hack in action...

It's 2010. Where's my jetback, biznotches?

OK - aggression dealt with.

For early 2010, I've got this final episode of Hack on tap, going up on Saturday January 9th. It will entail a 4x faster version of the fight we did in the last episode (which should be interesting, and probably a lot sloppy to say the least) and on top of that, we'll have another quick round of combat with a different character. When speaking with John Dirty Hurley at the last rehearsal, he noted he wanted it nasty. We can always make it funny later.

So... nasty to me means less combat and more selling a beat-down. Nothing distresses an audience more that a one sided fight with some brutal use of props. I'm excited.

In other news, the NJFA has moved locations meaning it may be a good deal easier to reach from NYC, which in turn means far more range time for me. CSSD SC classes should be resuming soon as well. With any luck, I'll get my new Desangut set soon too!

We are all systems go for a new addition to my already fun collection of body art. When it's all done, I'll be posting pics. Since I'm going half sleeve with color, it'll be a long process, but I'm looking forward to it.

And finally a resolution: choreograph at least 6 good fights this year for shows I'm not necessarily appearing in.

Here's to 2010. Which by the way I'm pronouncing twenty-hundred and ten. Just to be different.