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Despite All of his Contributions to Modern Stage Combat, Capo Ferro Was Not a Fight Director

8/23/2011

4 Comments

 
PictureA 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... 


Cappo Ferro is the author of a well known treatise on dueling.  If his name sounds familiar, it's because he is referenced (along with other luminaries) in the famous sword fight between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black in The Princess Bride.  Those masters and manuals that the characters reference are not about pretending to fight for the sake of an audience, they are about actually fighting.

Many very important figures in the world of stage combat include fencing manuals in their bibliographies, and many scholars whom I respect include such manuals in their bibliographies as "stage combat books."  I have some issues  with this. 

I feel that there need to be disclaimers on the realities (or perceived realities) that we reference.  Or in other words, Renaissance fencing manuals, while they are amazingly valuable resources for fight directors, are in fact essentially instruction manuals on how to kill someone with a sword.   And in my opinion should not be grouped with books about creating safe and effective choreography for the stage.  The same is true for any choreography adapted from martial arts with living traditions.  Someone might make a brief study of Aikido or Shorin-Ryu Karate for the sake of researching a fight scene, but they should not conflate martial arts training and theatrical fighting. 

That said, it is extremely valuable for those who create fights for the stage and screen to be aware of these books.  We reference the realities of violence to some degree or another, we do not recreate them.  Knowledge of various fighting disciplines can expand the choreographic palette, but the source material must be recognized for what it is.   Any time that techniques are adapted from such source material they are of course modified to make them safe for actors to perform as well as dramatically effective for the sake of the story being told.

I have a fairly substantial list of martial arts, self defense, and military manuals in the bibliography of my dissertation.  I would love to make portions of this list available to other people in the stage combat world.  But I am not yet sure how to contextualize them.  The writings of Marc MacYoung, for instance, while giving a whole lot of perspective and context for portraying violence, have little to do with creating entertainment in and of themselves.  And if/when I group his work with similar material as a resource for stage combat, it will be in a very different context than I would if I were presenting the same information for martial artists (though there is some overlap between martial artists and fight directors). 

One of the larger questions I deal with in my scholarship is the relationship between real and simulated violence.  What should be the place of 17th century fencing manuals for those people who deal with the creation of fake violence for the sake of storytelling?   I'm sure I'll be expanding the resources page soon to include resources that are not inherently related to the stage, so the question is how they should be contextualized.


EDIT (3/16/2012): My list of Martial Arts Resources for Stage Combat can be found by clicking here.
4 Comments
JT Turner
2/29/2012 10:00:19 am

I love this post. When I choreograph, I often get actors that say, "I know how to fence". I always reply, " Don't worry, we will work around that". We work in creating an illusion of reality, that is the key. Great post my friend.

Reply
Meron link
2/29/2012 10:14:35 am

Thank you!

I've started coming up with my own methodologies for "untraining" martial artists. The first thing I do is tell them that everything will be counter-intuitive and that many of the reflexes that they've spent years developing will be screaming out in pain and terror (and that I've been through the same acclimatization process myself). Once they know to expect that I find that the rest goes easier.

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Cara Pacifico link
3/2/2012 06:22:05 am

From the little I know of dueling it evolved (or went through periods when?) the goal was to make a good show of the attempt while NOT killing the other person. Since it often wasn't legal I know it wasn't so much a spectator sport, but do any of the masters (in dueling with swords OR pistols...or martial arts, I suppose) talk about the art of NOT hurting someone? Are there any grand flourishes that are show mastery but are not lethal? Near-misses are still not stage-worthy, but I wonder if this is a grey area that exists and, if so, if writers have addressed it.

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Meron link
3/2/2012 07:57:06 am

A lot of this varies in different periods and regions with each one opening up new avenues of fightaturgy.

Anthropologically, a duel is essentially a high-stakes athletic contest, often with very specific rules.

The adherence to the rules is well established in Hamlet, R&J and in Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Hamlet enters the duel with no expectation that it turn lethal. Mercutio & Tybalt might have stopped at a disarm without Romeo's intervention (there is a lot of room for interpretation in that scene), and in Hampton's play, there is an attempt to call it off by Valmont if I remember it correctly.

There are some interesting near-fighting passages in Shakespeare where no one gets hurt. The near duel in Twelfth Night where the seconds pass messages back and forth, as well as in the woods near the end of Midsummer where Puck impersonates one of the male lovers and says "I'll whip thee with a rod: he is defiled
That draws a sword on thee" (Act III, Scene 2). Both of these make it really clear that there are codes of socialized violence being observed on some level.

There are several dueling codes preserved from different times and places, some of which call for hostilities to end at first blood. There were also many reported incidences of people agreeing to both shoot into the air in a pistol duel, which would "restore honor" and leave everyone alive. Choice of weapons in different times and places matter a lot as well, a fight with single sticks is not as likely to lead to death by infection as one with smallswords, and both are far more likely to lead to permanent injury than a wrestling match.

Vincento Saviolo's manual is in two parts, one of which is technique, the other of which is etiquette around dueling.

Wrestling is generally designed to be non-lethal and there is plenty of source material there. Any sport fencing manuals are also by definition concerned with non-lethal violence. It's interesting because these fall into the general category of social violence (as opposed to asocial/predatory violence) so there are always sets of rules, even when the stakes are life and death. Some of the manuals deal with violence on a battleground as opposed to a dueling ground, which is a whole other set of rules (though there are still rules).


As far as NOT hurting someone in a high-stakes social violence situation, it comes up in some of the writings, but it generally requires far more skill. Especially if that someone is trying very hard to hurt you. There are writings on this in law enforcement use-of-force manuals and such. (I suppose a warning shot would qualify as such.)

Of course for stage and screen purposes everything depends on what serves the production. This is in part why I'm thinking about how to present all of this background information. Fightaturgy can be pretty involved, and I'd love to see more interactions between fight directors and dramaturgs about this sort of thing.

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    Meron Langsner, PhD

    Playwright, Theatre & Performance Scholar, Fight Director/Movement Specialist, Director, Educator

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