Running on Overdive...

I have become faced with a particularly interesting problem. Actually doing all this theater and fight/special effects work when coupled with a day job and a desire to actually spend some quality time with friends and loved ones highly limits one’s ability to write on one’s own blog about the aforementioned theater and fight/special effects work. I’ll spare you my thoughts on my day job except that to say that the film “Office Space” remains oddly timely and relevant to my life in ways that are too numerous to discourse upon.

But as promised, I wanted to talk about Hack! During the earlier “Saloon Series” runs of the episodes, rehearsal times were limited, as was the actual performance. However once the run at the Brick for the Too Soon Festival commenced (and was extended for additional shows!) there was ample time to rework the fight, and really get comfortable with it as performers.

As I also mentioned earlier, I feel victim to one of my own greatest pet peeves – I choreographed a fight that was cool, but had very little to do with the tone of the play, and was somewhat disconnected from the characters. Without the extremely knowledgeable eyes of director John Hurley to reign things back to where they’d serve the play, I’d have been exactly those people I get so annoyed about watching. But I digress, and I’ll cover that later.

Initially a whirlwind of close quarters arnis and eskrima style fighting, it took John pulling me aside and asking if I could do something a little more “spaghetti western” to get me to take a closer look at what I was doing. Sure it was gritty, and given enough rehearsal it might have approximated something close to the Bourne Identity movies in it’s intensity, but honestly, that was NOT was Hack! was about.

After some brief rethinking, and going back to the source material, the fight became something far more comical and “western-y”. On the one hand, this is something I really don’t like to do – make violence silly, or “cool” – but on the other hand, making a fight very grounded in reality when the ENTIRE SHOW was so far from anything like that is as bad a choice as say, a realistic style world where the fighters are suddenly proficient martial artists out of nowhere. More on that in moment.

As a result, the Hack! fight was very broad, very goofy, and full of huge whiffing roundhouse punches. Replete with the steadying hand on your target, punches were thrown that spun characters around in a 180 degree turns and yet somehow were simple and easy to recover from. The bad guys were sent packing and the heroes marched on. It was violence (comic violence) but violence for violence’s sake. Exactly what a bad spaghetti western features rather often. A lot of fun, and it came out well. I did still manage to toss in a few of my favorites moves, because hey, why not, but mostly things were silly.

I mention the fighting being grounded in the world of play here however because I wanted to mention a show I saw recently – James Comtois’ “The Little One.” A play about vampires, the script featured an abundance of differing philosophies from apex predator characters on how to deal with relating to humans and each other. I had some opinions on the direction and pace of the play, but since I’m not really a director, I try to keep those to myself. There were some things I’d have done differently, and there were some incredibly creative things I wouldn’t have come up with in a million years. This is just to say that I’m not taking a stand on direction and pace beyond my general enjoyment of the play and my appreciation for the work everyone did.

I did have one major problem with the play – and it’s a problem I have with Qui Nguyen’s fight direction. Much of what I saw seemed so similar to his work in “Fight Girl Battle World” and other work he’s done that I was kind of turned off. Much of the fighting seemed to be unfounded in the reality of the play. By way of example – when the nimble young lady who played the eponymous “Little One”, was attacked and turned into a vampire, she struggled, attempting to fend off the vampire who was turning her more or less for kicks and was unsuccessful – she was NOT a fighter. A matter of days (or nights) later she was tasked with fighting several vampires at once. Suddenly, she displayed a level of proficiency in martial arts that was distracting to say the least. I was willing to accept super human speed, strength and agility (such as live theater permits regarding style) but her fighting style was identical to everyone around her.

The fights were based in the style of fighting that Qui Nguyen knows and has trained his actors in. There was not much regard to a character’s given circumstances. Or perhaps not enough for me anyway. Every combatant fought the same way, and it was rather hollow to me. This is not to say that Qui Nguyen is not an exemplary fight choreographer, and has a skill set that is the envy of many a stage combatant, but rather to underscore a need that I think exists for fight choreographers to grapple more with the psychology of the character, and the overall tone of the play.

Again, no weapons (at least not for the vampires) and Nosedive's “gore factor” rumored to be highly proficient was disappointing. I’ve done work that was far nastier myself with 24 hours notice for comedy sketch teams. Random side story there, but thanks to LA’s The Midnight Show for being a great gang of gamers and willing to compromise! I had high expectations for “The Little One” - perhaps too high. Regardless, I found myself (and other audience members) tuning out of what should have been intensely important moments in Nosedive’s play.

Now, why all this yammering? Can I back this up? I hope so.

As I wrap up working on being a British Lord in Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” – yay for wit and accents - I am turning my attentions to fight choreography for Becca Schlossberg’s “3boys” directed by Madeleine Parsigian for the NY Fringe Festival. A play about three dogs, there a few moments of genuine violence in the show as the alpha and his “pack” come to terms with their existence as pets. Will there be arnis? No. Eskrima? No. Kung Fu? No. Kenpo? No. Tai Kwon Do? No.

Dogs don’t fight that way, like humans. Dogs fight like dogs. My challenge is to get three actors to move like people moving like dogs. Dogs throw their entire weight and bite. HARD. I need to get actors to do this safely and repetitively with their scene partners. I can’t have the lads biting each other, but I need to find a way that the audience understands that a given grapple and throw is about as close as we can get to humans clamping down, dragging, and shaking an enemy with their non-existent muzzles. Can I do it? I think I really can. I think what I’ve cooked up so far is going to be pretty outstanding actually – but we’ll see what these actors are comfortable with and go from there.

Oh and by the way – I did more than a little research for it. Beyond watching tons of video on dogs and wolves taking down prey, I had the good/bad fortune to be face to face with Luke – an 80 pound Dutch Shepherd pup being trained by NJFA Chief Instructor Lateif Dickerson. After spending some time down at Ft. Dix in central NJ blasting away at targets with an AR-15 for my latest rifle class, we got to play a bit with Chief Latief’s newest pup. Luke is being raised to perform as a cadaver dog for searches, but he’s also being trained as a guard. Luke is an impressive dog. Nothing gives you a better appreciation of what he can do than letting him do his thing.

By the way – I’ve passed my level 1 rifle certification and I’m just waiting on the paperwork! So, I’m handy with pistols, basic rifles (the SOCOMII is just so damned cool) and I’m looking forward to shotguns next. I don’t have any targets to show time time out though next time I’ll be ready with a zoom lens. After 100 yards, my target looks like a small white square and you can’t really see a damned thing.