What’s on tap for 2011?

With the 2010-11 Saloon Series now complete, and a one and done project at the Brick called “Dainty Cadaver” wrapped, I’ve found myself with my evenings relatively free to do things that normal people do, like laundry and occasionally cooking a meal, as opposed to scarfing down whatever passes for nutrients in the immediate vicinity of my rehearsals. It also means I can watch the big glowing rectangle in my living room occasionally. Hi Netflix Instant. Nice to meet you. I’m sure we’ll be fast friends.

A word (or several) about the Dainty Cadaver project though… the idea was based on the Exquisite Corpse game, apparently played by surrealist painters. Essentially, one artist draws an image on a piece of folded paper and a second artist continues the image from the first. The third artist bases their work from the image of the second, without viewing the first, the fourth by viewing the third, fifth from fourth etc etc.

So, the Piper McKenzie folks over at The Brick (where I’ve spent an inordinate amount time in the last year) thought this should work with playwrights too. One writer writes a scene, a second reads it and pens a second scene, the third writer reads the second and continues, writer four reads number three’s and so on until the sixth writer wraps it up based solely on the events of the fifth scene. In theory the resulting play should be a work of surrealist weirdness, with massive shifts in tone and plotting.

In reality, that is in fact exactly what happened. Cool, if you’re into weird surreal theater. For me, since I’m not all that excited by that sort of thing, the script I performed in left me a little at sea. However, under the steady and excellent direction of John Hurley and with a great gang of fellow actors, I think we made something rather nifty out of it.

So far as fight choreography goes, we were sorely pressed for time (maybe 4 solid rehearsals total) but the piece did allow me to stage and perform a very basic murder with a brick. Two strikes to the face - the first a jab and the second a rising arc uppercut. Then to top it all off a final blow to the side of the skull. But wait there’s more - because this was surreal, the Angel of Death comes in... and magically compels me to smash my own head in next. Never done that before.

Bloodless and simple, due to constraints of time and scant resources, however in my head…

I’d have gone with a foam brick. The victim actor (in this case the HUGE compared to me Ryan Andes) would have been prepped with blood bombs and a couple of loose teeth (furnished by the lovely and alluringly skilled Stephanie Cox Williams). I’d have kept the choreography similar to what we did, two main strikes. The first hit would bring Ryan’s hand up to his mouth and nose. Detonating the blood bomb, he’d splutter through some dripping goo, and the second hit would knock him backwards and to the floor, detonating the second bomb, simultaneously while throwing those loose teeth up into the air. As he lays gasping on the floor, maybe a piece of uncooked pasta could be slipped in his mouth. Because when I grab him by the shattered remnants of his face, some crunching and crackling would be nice. I say some utterly creepy things, and then deliver the killing blow. Another blood bomb for me when I smash my own head in and everyone wins.

Basically the audience saw all of that, minus any gore. I’d had loved to make it happen, but then again I also would have preferred to have a script that didn’t have characters dying and being erased every 10 minutes or dancing around with water bottles but that’s just me and my taste for narrative over esoteric.

On the up side, getting to actually hang out with the renowned Ryan Andes and both of us noticing we were each dripping with TAD gear, led to some cool conversations, talking firearms, and the potential to pick up some nifty new skills as well as exchange some of my knife knowledge with some of his performer friends who have sword skills. It’s always good when you find a like minded fellow who also happens to have similar interests and likes. And who is seriously, like 7 feet tall.

So – next up? A review of my new TAD gear FAST PACK EDC and then I’m going to be enrolling in some on camera classes. Time to dust off that skill set and try to make some damned money at this acting thing again. It’s been awhile since a decent paycheck came my way from pretending to be someone else.

There's a little ray of choreography sunshine on the horizon as well, a little cop on criminal beating if it pans out. We'll see...

Ho Ho Holy crap!

It’s Christmas time, and clearly I haven’t made an update to this ol’ blog since, well… the end of August.

This has been due to a number of things – getting swept up in post show depression from "Endless Summer Nights", beginning work on Crystal Skillman’s new Saloon Series play “Killer High”, cleaning the ol’ apartment, sketching various blade shapes, spending some LONG overdue time with family, etc, etc.

Yeah, I have to be honest… I let the “assorted trouble” fall by the wayside here, and if it hadn’t been for a timely email from Tim, that one guy who reads this blog, demanding to know what the hell had happened, I probably wouldn’t have gotten off my ass and updated things. SO! Here’s some random musings and thoughts covering my life since the end of August.

As previously mentioned, I had built the exploding apple rig for Boomerang’s "Venus Observed", which ironically is now residing with trusted friend and MFA graduate student Brian Smallwood at Yale University. Word is, the Yale theater folks want to take a look at the thing and consider how best to improve it’s reliability and effectiveness. Yee-ha, my contributions academia know no bounds. Do I expect to even recognize it in subsequent versions? No, I do not. But if it makes for more compelling staging down the road for folks, that’d be cool.

“Venus Observed”, by the way, in a decidedly late and short winded review, was absolutely charming, and I LOVED it. And speaking as very happily attached fella, I have to admit, much like the Duke in the play, I found myself utterly in love with any and all of the women in this show. My god - how could anyone have seen the show and not wanted to run away with any of them? Because I’m straight, I was less enamored of the dudes, but they too were awesome. For me, "Venus Observed" was a peak of Boomerang’s season, barring of course my own turn as Scotto in “Endless Summer Nights”. I was... awesome? Or something. I had a blast, and ultimately on the level of indie theater, if you’re making yourself happy and folks dig the show, that’s a win in my book. And for the reviewers who found some players too “well mannered” – well, I don’t know what show they were watching.

As a side note, performing a scene with one of my favorites - Nora Hummel - was a highlight. Even if I humor-whored her one night when I biffed on a line and took away a classic joke. I still feel bad about that. But getting to work alongside indie titans like Michael Criscuolo (everything you’ve heard about him is true – he really can fly) Synge Maher (a lady who I would have puppy-dog followed in high school) and recent addition to the nytheatre.com definitive list of awesomeness Becky Byers was sweet. And - relative new comer Brett Hoskins will be a name to watch in the coming years both as a performer and writer.

Plus, the theater had an ancient bowling alley hidden away in the basement, which made for closing night hilarity. Less so for our poor ASM, who overindulged a bit on the whiskey front, but thankfully Synge was there to save the day/night/day.

And then – there was Uncle Vanya. Among my least favorite shows ever, Boomerang’s production was actually a lot of fun to do, purely because everyone involved was a fun bunch with level heads, and big hearts. They kept the show from being a morose exercise in Russian death wishes. You don't often get to have that kind of experience doing Vanya. Also, getting to hang with Alex Engquist (of “3 Boys” fame) and powerhouse SM Stephanie B. on headset knocking out crosswords kept me sane. For the record I was gigging in as “Watchman #1” and I had a sound cue for a dog. Yay.

And then I was done. But not for long. By episode 2, I was into Crystal Skillman’s “Killer High” featuring my lady love as a middle school military brat hell bent on rescuing her kid sister from a gang of 3rd graders intent on killing everyone over the age of 10. It’s sort of like Apocalypse Now with kids. Sort of. Just go with it. And, I gained a new Nemesis, Sarah. She cheez-wizzed me onstage. Vengeance will be mine.

Aside from that, November was about settling in to the slightly slower pace of just working my day job and occasionally only working on side projects, while re-vamping our apartment and re-organizing life. Back to back to back to back and simultaneous shows can leave one a little off-kilter, and I’m still wondering how it got to be December already. “The Vigil…” was successfully published, and now people who read that play have to think of my dumb ass forever since I’ve been immortalized as the guy who played Jan. If the fates allow, perhaps “Vigil” won’t be the only published new play I appeared in during 2010. But I’m not saying anything else, since the writer of that play was very “confidential” about that possibility. Yay.

With regards to fight choreography, I did have a meeting with a playwright and director in November about a possible upcoming gig – but I’ve not heard anything back, leaving me to assume they either didn’t like the flavor of violence I brought to the party, or they’re just waiting to get the project more off the ground. No worries though – now that director John Hurley has returned from a months long sojourn abroad, I’m hoping Impetuous will have something in the works soon I can devote some time to. Whether or not I'm on stage, that is. Not being picky after the 2010 I had. Plus some webisode work on a little sci-fi action may be in the air too.

Then of course, there’s the blade design. I’ve got two knife designs I’m working on, one a real practical fixed blade, customizing a variant of Bram Frank’s Abaniko to be a little more stylized for my grip and the particular habits I’ve developed practicing CSSD SC blade combat. A slightly extended blade length, with a wider spine, a little more bell to the edge, and a handle that’s also swelled and curved to fit in the hand more like the folding LLCs. This is all an experiment of course, as I try to teach myself the basics of good knife making. I probably won’t ever do much more than show it to some friends. If it works. Since I have the utmost respect for both Mr. Frank, and the people who manufacture his designs, I’m not trying to mess with what is already a wonderful thing. I have a feeling that those blades are designed and made the way they are for very good reasons, and I’m just going to make major mistakes so that I can learn exactly why.

The other design I’m tinkering with is a real weird one – inspired by some of the wilder looks I’ve seen in the custom blade magazines and has a real “sci-fi’ feel to it. I want to see how out there I can get while still creating a functional camp knife. For the record, I expect to mostly create a lot of junk. On the other hand, getting some decent steel and making it look really sexy but still just be a prop knife is also on the agenda, so every junker I make can still be salvaged to be a safe prop weapon by rendering it duller than the back of a spoon.

And that brings me back to fight choreography. Just when I had put enough cash aside to perhaps spring for the Vampire Cowboys fight school, Qui Nguyen up and moves to Minnesota. Don’t it just figure. I’ll be watching the Rabid Vamps website for updates on how that will effect their training program, but I still want to see about bringing more toys to their table. They do the classic eastern martial arts really well. But modern tactical and firearm deserves it’s place at the fake fight table too! I still believe that, and getting away from the myth of the unarmed combatant is something a lot of theater could stand to try.

So for 2011, I’m going to be pursuing more and more stage fight work with an eye towards modern weapons, and modern techniques. If you know someone or you are someone who is looking for that kind of mayhem, drop me a line here –

knivesgunsntrouble@gmail.com

P.S. - Hi Uncle Pete.

My dad’s brother reads this now – which is cool. The man knows his weapons and his hunting (he hand loads his own ammunition) so I will be picking his brains about firearms between his travels around the world.

So that was a scatter brained and hard to read update. Expect more regular output here though – I mean it. In the meantime, enjoy your holidays, and be sure to watch the Walking Dead on AMC in re-runs until they do season 2. It was awesome.

Big Gay Dogs and the occasional exploding apple...

The latest show I’ve been working on, “3boys” a new play by the relatively young playwright Becca Schlossberg and produced and performed by a crew of Drew University folks has had it’s opening in the NYC Fringe Festival, and is now more or less done its run. It was a tricky show, but one which allowed me to really test some of my theories about the nature of violence on stage, as well how best to communicate something very specific with that violence. I think it worked.

I’m not going to pretend that the effectiveness with which my stuff is landing (reviews and commentary on the show are glowing) comes solely from my work – that’s unrealistic and silly. Rather this is a deft and sly script directed with a steady hand by the Madeleine Parsigian. We came to an early agreement about the style and meaning behind the movement of three humans pretending to be dogs onstage, and furthermore how to make sure that movement communicated the feelings of anger and denial from barely contained homosexual impulses.

Not being gay or a dog, I was a little unsure of how best to proceed, but she knew first and foremost, dudes romping around on all fours would be dumb. I agreed. Dudes who behaved as humans and evolved into more canine gestures and movement as their “human restraints” break down depending on the emotional charge of a given moment is better. But since dogs bite and throw all their weight around, and humans tend to punch, kick and use tools (and their thumbs) meant we had to find ways to safely keep these actors from knocking each others teeth out on each other and the floor.

I had to first choreograph this in my head as humans would fight it out, and define very clearly the emotional impulse that was the impetus for each movement. Once I had defined what the impulse was for one character and then the impulse for an opposite character’s reaction, I had to define how a dog reacts to the same stimulus, and then how to translate that back to a human. Finally I had to split the difference and make it safe, replicable, and cool to view. A tricky and risky plan, since if the fighting looked too human it wouldn’t work and if it looked like people playing “dog” it would take away from the impact of each moment.

After long hours of watching dogs and wolves attack various things on video and a few tumbles with a dog being trained to find cadavers and guard against humans, I came up with some cool stuff, and I was able to get our actors to understand where this was coming from, what it could mean and how to do it safely. I’ve been rewarded on this particular project by a lot of good reviews, and a lot of good feedback from peers. I’m calling it a win.

If there’s any kind of supernatural force guiding the path of the righteously good theater experience, 3boys will see some more action somewhere down the line, or at least the production team that brought it to life will get the chance to explore more work with profit and exuberance.

Next up I’m appearing in “Endless Summer Nights” with Boomerang opening in mid September, and while this hack of a playwright (Hi Tim! – Tim, for the non Tim readers, is a director, writer of the play and the man behind Boomerang Theater Company) couldn’t be bothered to craft a single solitary moment of violence in his otherwise touching and humorous look at a couple on opposite ends of a strange continuum, I’ve been given the chance to design a special effect for another show running as part of the same repertory season, “Venus Observed.” At some point in that show one character shoots an apple held in the hand of another. Sooo… I got to make the rig that makes the apple explode as if shot.

A quick youtube search will show you lots of high speed camera footage of apples being impacted by bullets. You’ll notice that the apples seem to virtually explode. A high velocity projectile, even the relatively low mass of a bullet transfers a ton of energy to it’s target upon impact. In the real world the primary cavity bored by the bullet, is next to invisible as the shock waves are transmitted through the apple. Almost instantly, the skin of the apple ruptures as the interior of the apple is pulverized and turned into liquid secondary projectile sprayed in almost all directions.

Yummy.

However, as you can guess, there isn’t much I can do to safely and repeatedly detonate an apple onstage, in an actor’s hand, both without covering everyone in a 15 foot radius in apple goo, and also potentially harming the actor with flying chunks of high speed material. I opted for an effect that is a little less realistic, but is safer and gets the point across. By prepping the actor with a C02 charge and the appropriate fittings, and pre-setting a bored and cored apple on stage, the C02 charge can be triggered simultaneously with the “gunshot” and the apple explodes leaving the apple in the actors hand (also containing the fitting) and spraying “apple shrapnel” in two directions, to actor’s left and right, clear of himself and depending on how big we want the effect to be onstage, leaving a massive hole blasted through the center of the apple. Safe, repeatable and actor controlled. Compressed air to the rescue folks, once again. Come see the Boomerang rep season beginning on the 11th of September. An exploding apple in “Venus Observed”, me acting in “Endless Summer Nights” and hey why the hell not, since I don’t like to be bored, I’ll just pop up once or twice in “Uncle Vanya” too.

Lest you think I’m done after this, so far I’ve got tentative plans to appear once more in the Vampire Cowboys monthly Saloon, courtesy of writer Crystal Skillman as she crafts another wacky adventure. From what I hear, it’ll be a fun one. Beyond that – my horizons are clear for now. Just in time to begin forging prop knives over the winter courtesy of lessons learned from Wayne Goddard’s “$50 Knife Shop.”

Ideal Husband is done...

While this is essentially my fight choreography forum, I did want to mention that we've completed an all too brief run of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" after an elongated yet strangely underwhelming rehearsal process. In the end we came across with a suitable production of the piece, but I was left wondering about some of the choices - always an uncomfortable feeling when one is performing in the show one is questioning.

That said, I worked with some old friends, new friends, and was exposed to some folks who really knocked my socks off with regards to talent. A learning experience all around, and a fun one. But, how does this relate to my fight choregraphy?

I now have a very clear idea of what feeling adrift without usable guidance in critical moments can feel like. It's an experience I suppose I've been very fortunate to have missed out on in the last 12 years of performing in and around NYC. As a fight choregrapher I've resolved to insure that no performers I'm working with ever have that feeling. Especially since if it was that disconcerting when the most rigorous physical action involved changing my pants, I don't want to put performers through a fight where every move isn't justified and cleanly worked if I can help it.

Which brings me to 3boys, coming soon at the NYC Fringe Festival. It's actually an excellent script, by Becca Schlossberg, and I think provokes some interesting questions on the nature of our relationships to man's best friends. With the plethora of options available to see I do hope folks make it out to see this show. It's well worth the effort!

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.

I got rather busier than I intended...

Hello, there you - occasional reader of my musings on theater, combat, and stage choreography...

So, Hack is nearing the end of it's official 5 show run (woo-ee... 5 shows...) but it appears because this little show has been packed and is the best reviewed, best seller of the festival, we'll be doing a few more nights... possibly the 20th (this Sunday) and the 27th.

Since I last wrote here, the fight that takes place in HACK was somewhat altered. Director John Hurley noted that all of this fast modern combat stuff I was cooking up was neat-o... but not... well... western-y.

Duh.

A day later I was back at rehearsal with some more bar-room brawling type activities (upping the unrealistic is always easier as opposed to making things more truthful). The end result has been very well received, for it's camp factor and it's extremely spaghetti western feel. Also, one of my favorite moments is getting huge response and true to form, I set it up so that I could watch the whole thing and enjoy it. Since the show isn't over yet, I'm not spoiling anything by writing out the fight map yet. But I'll post it up soon.

For now though, it's wrapping "HACK!" for the time being, getting "Ideal Husband" up, and really digging into the dogfighting for "3boys" a Fringe show I'll be fight working later this summer.

On a side note, friend and former roomie Lori Prince reports that her show "Killing Women" went well enough closing a successful run at Theater Row, and was herself pleasantly surprised at her ability to load and ready a replica Colt M1911 .45 without looking at it. I'm not saying it's because I showed her how to do it, but I'm not saying it wasn't that either.

And finally, just to be clear on something. Whenever I think I'm bad-ass enough, I can always count on my friend and teacher Mike Stone to school me. He killed a fly buzzing around his room by shooting it with a paintball fired from a compound bow. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I know people will want to stick with me, but I'm headed to his house.

Concerning Hack and the concept of comical fighting...

We're chugging along in rehearsals for Hack, which to be perfectly honest is more about hanging around with a bunch of really cool funny people while we also do our work. I love being in this show. It's funny. Over the top melodrama at it's most campy - simple moments become the goofiest things just by virtue of the fact that we have to make choices as actors that are decidedly NOT good acting. It's actually a little trickier than it looks, but it does work.

As mentioned in previous posts, there's a fairly tight bit of fighting that needs to happen in Episode 4, and while I was happy for the most part with how it went down last winter, we had only a truncated rehearsal process and couldn't quite get things to where I wanted them to be. Safety first of course, so it was a little sloppy and distant looking.

This time we've got some more time under our belts so the fight sequence is actually changing a lot. Because the rest of the show is SOOOOO distant from anything approaching a grounded and real world, the fighting is becoming a bit more comical. While I don't want to push into the full realm of spaghetti western bar room brawling, I'm adding new stuff that takes it into the silly. The attacks and their defenses are still pretty real looking stuff, however when those hits land, these characters are able to stoically continue onwards in the fight where a real person would be pretty disabled. I've added in a touch of kung-fu and jiu jitsu, mostly for a few throws and a shoulder dislocation, and ironically, the final moments of the fight sequence are less of a piece of combat and more of a "Darth Vader" choke out. I'm really looking forward to that.

Last night I also began the work of getting our "Soldier" a pivotal character - the little ten year old psychotic up to speed with two handed blade weaving, using a bit of Filipino sinwali. She's picked it up quite quickly thankfully, and we've even managed to throw in a dash of Flamenco dance posture. Because hey, martial arts are cool, but martial arts presented as a dance are funny. There's no strikes using the techniques, it's more her just getting herself prepped to interrogate another character. Where that moment goes is actually pretty damned goofy, but then... that's Hack! for you.

But there you have it. I also begin rehearsals tonight for "Ideal Husband" which features not a whit of combat, but will feature a lot of rambling British dialects. That one goes up in July, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for news on that one.

Oh and I'm disappearing for the next week - the lady-type and I are going to rest up on a tropical island for the next 7 days so I'm off the grid while I explore all that a small Caribbean island has to offer. So far, I'm thinking beaches, snorkeling, hiking in the jungle and rum. LOTS of rum. I'll post again when I'm back and can sober up.

Welcome to summer 2010, folks. It's going to be a good one.