Stage Swordfighting

I have been interested in fencing for years, even doing a very little bit of it in grad school at Indiana, and I always use my practice foil as a visual aid when explaining the plot against Hamlet in Act V.  While I wished there were some way other than watching the filmed fight scenes for my students to experience the joy of swords, I really didn't feel expert enough to try to do more.

That all changed on a July afternoon when all the participants of the Folger Summer Academy gathered on its grassy front lawn facing our nation's Capitol, took off our shoes, took up our dowels, and took choreographed swings at one another.  Since that very moment, I have been plotting to do stage sword fighting with my own students.

My first hurdle was figuring how what equipment to use.  I knew I didn't want to use dowels as we had in the Academy.  I kept hearing variations of an explanation about how one wound up shattered and embedded in a student, so I began to search for an alternative with which injury would be as impossible as I could humanly make it.

Dollar Tree to the rescue, once again.  During Halloween, they had inflatable lightsabers.  This, of course, appealed quite deeply not only to the geek in me but also to the geek in my students, so I cleaned the store out and scurried away with my prize.  They were locked safely in my supply cabinet, and every time I opened the door, I grinned at the thought of what was to come.

Finally, second semester started and our Hamlet unit began.  Since weather in Mississippi in the winter is tricky, I booked our auditorium as a backup, but my true goal was the large open green space in the center of our campus.  Despite rain early in the week, by the time we got to the magic chosen day, the temperatures were mild, the ground was firm, and the sun was shining.  The students grabbed their chosen inflatable lightsaber, and out we went.

Just as we'd been taught at the Folger, I lined them up and started with footwork.  The students laughed as they tried to master the stance and the proper movements.  I ran them forward and backward, remembering the sage advice to "wear them out" first.

I showed them the five strikes and blocks, and we practiced.  As we worked, students passed by from other places.  Some of them took pictures.  Some of them stood to watch until their teacher urged them on.  Several of them said, "Man, I wanna take this class.  What is this class?"  My student swordsmen and women fought on.

Once I felt like they had as much of the basics as a 50-minute introduction with an inflatable sword was likely to yield, I told them to come up with a scene for us that they would perform for the whole group.  I walked around and helped out, took pictures, and generally enjoyed what I was seeing.  They were putting together some amazing things.  One group of guys had more background than the others since one is active in local theater and the other actually plays sword sports.  A group of girls incorporated synchronized cartwheels.  One group had two attacking one brave defender, and a group of four girls wound up in a carefully designed free-for-all in which everyone was dead at the end.

It was fabulous.  It was everything I had hoped for all those months ago on a DC summer evening.

We watched each group perform, and everyone cheered.  Snapchat videos were shot.  Selfies were taken.  It was more than a lesson; it was a memory.  Hopefully, they will look back on their senior year at some time in the future and say, "Hey, do you remember that time when....?"

At the end, just as my teacher group had done during the Academy, I had all the students take one of the Famous Last Lines from the packet provided by the Folger, and we all stood in a large circle.  The only instructions I gave them were that they needed to be loud and as ridiculously dramatic as possible as they "died."  Melodrama abounded.  Some went quickly and brutally.  Others drew it out in a way that Bugs Bunny himself would have approved of.  We laughed and laughed.

When it was over, we dusted ourselves off, collected our battered lightsabers, and went back to the classroom. The following day, we watched a filmed version of the final fight.  As they viewed, I saw several of them commenting to their partners about the moves of the fencing.  How could one ask for more than this?