Essential Stage Fencing: Training Manual for Actors

Essential Stage Fencing is a sequel to my book Essential Stage Movement, Psycho-Physical Training for Actors, published in 2010. In the initial textbook of this series, I expounded the basic principles of a movement education method for actors developed in Russia for the past hundred years and virtually unknown in the West. Essential Stage Fencing is a manifestation of a unique system developed in Russia by a famous athlete/fencer Ivan Kokh, who later became a celebrated stage movement scholar and my mentor for more than eight years. Since I started my US career, I have developed this system to harmonize Western theater and theater education's ethics and aesthetics. My textbook is an attempt to unify the training of future actors in the area of Stage Fencing. It is also an effort to preserve basic knowledge in using a weapon in stage presentations for future generations of actors. It stems from my hope that classical drama's magnificent works will be celebrated and preserved in the future.The book consists of several chapters. Among others are the History of Stage Fencing, Basic terms of armed combat, and Exercises in Fencing. The main content is a presentation of four stages of training with a detailed description of exercises. There is also a section on the Methodology of the education process. Altogether, the textbook is a complete course in Stage Fencing that would serve as a teaching tool and a reference manual for actors, directors, stage managers, and choreographers of theater, TV, and Film. This book includes my knowledge and practical experience accumulated over the last fifty years of work as an actor, theater director, instructor, and choreographer. I have directed all my efforts towards the unification of movement training based on Stanislavsky's System. Stage Fencing is an engaging subject of theater education, forcing many young people to take seminars and workshops offered by private Fight Masters. The problem is that no one can develop these skills in two or three weeks. The approaches are so diverse that the two actors taught by different Masters if met in one production, would hardly recognize each other techniques. The method described in my book is straightforward, consistent, and unified. After taking only one semester of Essential Stage Fencing, gifted students would be able to choreograph a simple fight scene in a production. For that reason, I dedicated one of the chapters in a book to the "secrets" of fight choreography. A special chapter explains how the techniques acquired can be used, with minor adjustments, to create a period fight scene with different weapons. As an example, there is a chapter on Quarterstaff techniques that concludes the textbook.