It is fascinating how each week of rehearsal has coalesced into very specific themes. Last week, our theme was Journeys. This week is Violence. Delicious, delicious violence.
Be it a vicious, feral bar brawl, or a kickass Buffy-esque fight against the creatures of darkness, or a Western tank of a man in (potentially) a giant duster coat kicking the shit out of some evil minions, we have sunk our teeth into the art that is stage combat during these last few days.
The incredible thing about this cast is that we all come from different backgrounds. Some are dancers and movement artists, others are martial artist, and still others are trained specifically in combat for the stage. Jason is a storyteller, and Jon is a fight choreographer. With our powers combined, we are able to create some epic moments. What one person does not know, others will teach. We are pushed beyond our comfortable skill sets to do things we never thought possible. Our fighting vocabularies are diverse, so when each piece calls for something distinct and unique, our collective knowledge of wrestling or Bagua (a type of Kung Fu), or action films or weight sharing or physics gives us thousands of moves to choose from. The pieces of violence we have on stage vary from the comedic, to the brutal, to the disturbing, to the satisfyingly uplifting.
The relationship between violence and art is fascinating. Violence, in real life, is something that we abhor. The reality of it, the sickening crunch of bone, the pain, the shock, the wrongness of it, the fear and unemphatic nature of it, not to mention the moral struggle we as humans feel when participating in or seeing an act of violence, is something that leaves a mark on us. In art, however, it is an aesthetic. It is a tool. It is the moment where words fail and feelings must be expressed physically. It has a kind of dark beauty that makes the audience in the movie theatre go “OH MAN, that was AWESOME!” I can’t speak for other performers, but I know that telling a story through violence on stage successfully and believably is one of the great joys in my life. It is cathartic, in a way. Perhaps because I can participate in an act of violence knowing that I am not actually hurting anyone. That I am telling a great story and that there are no real life consequences. I can be Black Widow and look really badass without worrying if the guards I kill have families. However, most of the violence I do on stage has a heightened level to it, an element of fantasy that keeps it from being immediate and sickeningly real. There are plays, and even pieces in our show, that take the reality of violence and bring it very close to home. A small act of emotionally brutally real violence is often more exhausting and painful for a performer and for an audience than an entire scene of fighting off super villains.
In a way, stage violence is a way for us as theatre artists to address the issue of violence in our society head on. It is a war we wage using our diverse talents to change hearts and minds: to inspire heroes and condemn monsters through the aesthetic of violence so that our world might get a little less dark.
-Megan Reichelt
Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters
July 11-28
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda
