Educational Services
Workshops and Seminars
Are you providing a series of theatre-related workshops, either as an addition to your theatre season or as a part of your educational or outreach program? Are you producing a show involving fights and want to give your actors some extra training? Do you have students interested in knowing what kinds of theatre jobs exist beyond “actor” and “carpenter,” or in knowing more about the process of creating theatrical violence?
Give us a few nights in your rehearsal schedule to train technique and performance, and your actors will soon be more confident and more proficient when swinging steel or throwing punches! Or perhaps we can add a lecture, demonstration, and/or Q&A session into your course schedule, letting students find out a bit about what it’s like to be professional performers and choreographers.
Stage Combat workshops can be incredibly popular, not to mention a great deal of fun for everyone involved! They’re always a huge draw, and we can teach to a wide range of experience, from children to established professionals. We can tailor our services to your needs, ranging from short one-or-two-day introductory workshops to multi-week residencies.
Examples of past workshop topics have included:
Falling for the Theatre -- a two- to five- hour long workshop exploring various methods by which actors can fall when the character requires it: slips, trips, faints, and more!
Rolling with the Punches -- a two-hour workshop focusing on the fundamentals of falling down and throwing a basic stage punch or slap
Fierce Fighting, Safely -- an afternoon-long workshop focusing on the fundamentals of control and basic techniques of using stage swords.
Slow Motion Makes Everything Better -- A workshop geared towards introducing concepts of stage combat choreography to theater directors and scholars, with an emphasis on collaborative work between choreographer, director, and cast.
Hamlet through the eyes of a Fight Director -- A multi-session workshop aimed at high school students studying Shakespeare and how the movement and action described in the text can help bring the words to life. Aiming at reading scenes with a careful eye toward performance clues; this workshop can be expanded to include some light choreographic exploration with students in addition to discussing text and performance.
Most workshops include a hands-on portion, although lecture/demonstrations may be preferred by larger groups or venues where individual participation may not be possible; our lecture topics can give your students a “behind the scenes” look through a customized lecture and/or demo presentation for theatre, literature, and history classes. We’ll demonstrate some of the ways we produce the illusion of violence safely, revealing some of our trade secrets in the process. Lectures on both historical and contemporary practices of stage combat are also available, and are customizable to your curriculum needs. From Shakespeare to S.E. Hinton, we've got you covered!