QUARTERSTAFF SPT

The exam

The SAFD Skills Proficiency Test requires that the student be tested in several required techniques. These techniques have been carefully chosen to make sure the performer receives a well-rounded approach to each style. It also insures that a test judge, or adjudicator, sees enough techniques on the test day to be able to fairly decide who has passed the SPT. It is up to the teacher of the class to instruct the students in all of these basic techniques, and then link them into a fight sequence. This becomes the test fight, which all students learn. Each teacher creates a unique piece of fight choreography for the students to learn. There is no “national standard” fight test. The standard is in the list of required techniques, which all students must master. The exam is not mandatory for class participation, but is required to achieve SAFD certification (good for 3 years).

Course Instructor

Jonathan Ezra Rubin – Fire & Ice Movement Arts

Jonathan Ezra Rubin freelances as a fight & intimacy director throughout the Washington, DC-Metro Area. In addition to his freelance career, he has over a decade of theatre administration and nonprofit executive management experience, which he is currently putting to use as the Co-Chair of the SAFD’s Development Department and, as of 1/1/23, also as the SAFD’s Treasurer.

A Certified Teacher with the SAFD, a three-time Helen Hayes Award Nominee for Outstanding Choreography (Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters, Flying V Fights: The Secret History of the Unknown World, Crystal Creek Motel), and WATCH Award Nominee for Fight Choreography (Appropriate), Jonathan works regularly as a fight & intimacy director throughout the DC-Metro Area.   He is a proud Associate Member of The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national professional theatrical union. Jonathan has been a staff member at approximately 30 regional SAFD workshops across the country since 2014, in addition to assisting and/or coordinating multiple additional masterclasses in that time, including working as one of the Co-Coordinators of the Social Distance Showdown: Virtual Stage Combat Workshop, the first and largest online weekend workshop of its kind, in May 2020, as well as its 2nd iteration in October 2020. Jonathan is also the owner of Fire & Ice Movement Arts, a stage combat and theatrical intimacy choreography and education company.

EXAM ADJUDICATOR

Robert Westley – SAG AFTRA, SDC, SAFD Fight Master 

Robert has performed, directed, and choreographed movement, staged violence and intimate movement for award winning films, theatre productions and internationally acclaimed opera houses for twenty-three years. Robert incorporates his training in acting, dance, clowning, martial arts, mask, puppetry, yoga and other disciplines to bring unique creation of character and story to multiple performance venues. His work has received rave reviews by the New York Times, New York Magazine, Variety, Newsday, Opera News and many others.

 He made his Broadway debut for his work on the Tony nominated Hand to God (Tony Nomination for Best Play) and recent Broadway productions of A Bronx Tale: The Musical directed by Academy Award winner Robert DeNiro and Tony Award winning director Jerry Zaks, Gettin’ The Band Back Together and Bernhardt/Hamlet starring Janet McTeer. Most recently he choreographed New York City productions of Teenage Dick at The Public Theatre, The Thanksgiving Play at Playwright’s Horizons, Important Hats of the Twentieth Century at Manhattan Theatre Club, Verité at LCT3, Lesser America’s Trevor, Second Stage Theatre’s production of Butcher of Baraboo, the Off-Broadway production of Little Rock, Studio 42’s Billy Witch, The New York Musical Theatre Festival production of The Screams of Kitty Genovese, the Keen Company’s Tea and Sympathy, and The New York Fringe Festival’s The Salacious Uncle Baldrick and Waiter, Waiter. Regional Theatre credits include Paper Mill Playhourse productions of The Honeymooner’s the Musical and The Sting the Musical, the Westport Country Playhouse’s productions of What the Butler Saw, Bedroom Farce, and The Things We Do For Love, Asolo Repertory Theatre’s The Game’s Afoot and God of Carnage, Utah Shakespeare Festival productions of Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, The Tavern, Guys and Dolls and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Boston’s New Repertory Theatre’s A Skull in Connemara and Los Angeles’ Circle X Theatre’s production of The Bigger Man. Robert has choreographed movement for the New York City Opera production of La fanciulla del West and Tosca, New England Opera’s production of The Dangerous Liasion and Saint of Bleeker Street at DiCapo Opera, Les Contes D’Hoffmann and I Pagliacci/Goyescas for Central City Opera, Carmen at the Chautauqua Opera, The Lost Colony, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the 75th Anniversary Tour of Porgy and Bess which played regionally and at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

In additional to stage success, Robert has stunt coordinator and arranged fights for Brooklyn Film Festival award winning Victoriana, The Subject starring Jason Biggs, Giselle’s Heart, Bullycam and the upcoming web series, After. He has worked as a stunt double and stunt performer for action films such as The Key Man starring Hugo Weaving, Eyeborgs starring Danny Trejo and Fall Down Dead with David Carradine. As a physical performer Robert has worked in productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, New York Theatre Workshop and for independent live action companies across the country. He is a member of the SAG-AFTRA and SDC.

Robert has been an instructor and movement coach for theatrical productions and on film sets, intensives in America and Great Britain and at Boston University’s Theatre Conservatory and Opera Institute, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, National Theatre Conservatory, Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, the Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Alabama, Temple University and presently at Hofstra University.

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