Quotations: Volume 48

Here are some of the educational, inspirational, and humorous quotations from my classes this week:

(Disclaimer: quotations are often taken out of context and may not accurately reflect the way they were originally intended)



Stage Combat Instructor: Let's say, worst case scenario, what happens if you actually get kicked in the yummies?
1st-year GP: It'll look real!
Stage Combat Instructor: Well, yes, it'll look real, but that's the goal.
1st-year KC: Tony Award!

"We're not saying, 'We're fight people, and you must bow to our whim.'"
- Fight Master

"When you hear the inner monologue of a fight, it's usually either, 'Aha!' or, 'Oh, f***!' It just goes between those two."
- Fight Master

"It's like when people say all the words of Shakespeare and think they've done verse."
- Fight Master, on sometimes people think that by doing all the moves of stage combat, they've actually done a fight scene, even though they're not telling the story at all

"Shakespeare wrote, 'They fight,' not, 'A fight'. It's who they are that makes it important and interesting."
- Fight Master

"You can't stop pursuing your Doing because you're out of choreography."
- Fight Master

"Follow your d*** instincts, man!"
- Fight Master, to O.D.

Killer: (as he throws a punch) BAM!
Fight Master: Don't say bam.

"Don't take reactions to the floor. The floor didn't pay to see your face."
- Fight Master

"Impact becomes a given circumstance."
- Fight Master

"It's like a piece of paper that's on the floor of the stage that actors keep walking by, but they ignore it. But the whole audience sees it, and wonders why the actors aren't acknowledging it."
- Fight Master, on how the audience has seen you get punched in the jaw, and therefore you need to continue to have pain from that punch

"Change the beat, move your feet."
- Fight Master

"We're trying to see if you learned a fight, or how to fight."
- Fight Master

"We want to be worried for the character, never for the actor."
- Stage Combat Instructor

"I've blocked fights where people bash babies' heads into walls, but you never lose an audience faster than when an actor actually spits on another actor's face."
- Stage Combat Instructor, on why you shouldn't do real spitting on stage

Fight Master: You have to follow through with the punch after the knap, so that you look like a fighter. We don't want you to look like a knapper. A knapper? I think I made that up.
Angela: I'm a knapper, not a fighter.
Fight Master: Make knaps, not war.