So you might be asking yourselves, "You know, where did the Sunday Special Blog posts go? I loved that shit. It was witty and insightful and me me consider stage combat in a new light." Well to those fantastic readers I will tell you. Moving to a new country and starting a graduate program isn't the easiest thing in the world. But that being said, I have not forgotten you.
A few weeks ago I stumbled on this fantastic quote on stage combat from John O'Connor's Shakespearen Afterlives:
I experience a much more profound sense of waste watching the ruin of [Baz] Lurhman’s young American’s [in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet], and maybe come closer to understanding the horror that Shakespeare’s audiences felt watching boys clumsily care each other up with swords than I ever do with a traditional setting go the play. It’s something to do with the fact that stage and screen sword-fighting almost inevitably has a whiff of the heroic and swashbuckling about it, not least because such a combat has to be skillfully choreographed if it is to meet the dual criteria imposed by aesthetics and safety. But the ensuing display of virtuosity – I’m thinking about the magnificent opening fight scene in [Franco] Zeffirelli’s 1968 film [of Romeo & Juliet] – serves to mask the horror of what’s actually going on, to the extent that the Prince comes across as a bit of spoilsport for stopping it. I feel sure that a parent watching the Montague/Capulet fights in the 1590s would be shuddering at the all-too-familiar sight of boys mutilating each other and bleeding ingloriously to death in dirty London alley ways; not admiring a balletic display of heroics, as it can so easily be for a century that has grown up to think not of sword-fighting but sword-fencing, in which the sword is endowed with romantic and ‘heritage’ connotations along with a the doublet and flagon of sack. Giving boys guns – or, as in 1986 [Michael] Bogdanov version [for the Royal Shakespeare Company], flick-knives and bicycle-chains – help us to see their brawling for the messy, destructive business it actually is.
(Shakespearean Afterlives, John O’Connor, p. 31)
Now I had tried to write several different posts for this quote but I found that it had touched on so many different issues with stage combat that I had trouble getting my thoughts down in a coherent logical flow. There is just too much good bits in that passage that can be explored. In the coming weeks I hope to break down a few of the different aspects that Mr. O'Connor touches upon. Til then, let me know your thoughts and we can explore together.
Til next Sunday, Cheers from the Motherland,
Adam
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