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A plate from Capo Ferro's Treatise
Curating information is a task that demands that one think carefully about how various types of material are being presented.

As some of you may have noticed, I recently started working on a page of Stage Combat Resources for this site, as I feel that there is a need for such a thing.  (I also started a more modest one for Playwriting & Dramaturgy, but that is more to guide people to the more established resources that are already out there).  On the stage combat page I've listed (among other things): links to professional organizations, weapons suppliers that I can vouch for, some teaching organizations in NYC that I've trained with, and links to a bunch of stuff by & about me (including my recent McSweeney's interview, which I have to admit made me feel mildly famous).  And perhaps most importantly, a selected bibliography. 

The bibliography is where I am having some trouble.  While books by B.H. Barry and J. Allen Suddeth are obvious and required reading, I don't quite know what to do with Ridolfo Capo Ferro. Or Vincentio Saviolo.  Or Morihei Ueshiba for that matter.  Let me explain... 

 
 
In order to maintain some momentum in the aftermath of my dissertation defense and subsequent graduation, in the past few months I did a couple of book reviews for scholarly journals.  Both reviews will be appearing in the next few months.

My review of Eugenio Barba's latest book, On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House (Routledge: 2009) will appear in the next issue of New England Theatre Journal, and my review of John Donohue's Kage: The Shadow (YMAA: 2011) will soon be appearing in The Journal of Asian Martial Arts.
 
 
This past weekend I attended two seminars taught by Rory Miller.  Rory is the author of Meditations on Violence, and more recently, Facing Violence, both of which are among the best books I've read on the subject (and both of which I ended up citing quite a bit in my dissertation).  In this post I'll be discussing some of his teaching and methodology as well as some of the implications.  I'm responding from the perspective of a theatre and performance scholar who specializes in the representations of violence as much as from the perspective of a martial artist, self defense instructor, and fight director.