Director Dexter Bullard, using a long, double-edged sword,swatted at the flies buzzing around the Next Lab stage as he waitedfor fight choreographer Ned Mochel to arrive.
"A lot of our things are on the level of blackouts based on aconcept of something you would least expect," Bullard explained,slicing through the air with his sharp weapon. "You expect swords.We go a lot further."
Rapiers. Ninja swords. Pistols. Billy clubs. These are onlya few of the weapons utilized by Bullard and fight choreographerMochel to create "Night at the Fights: A Combat Spectacle," a75-minute, no-holds-barred celebration of the art of fightchoreography (co-produced by Powertap Productions).
Under Bullard's direction, a cast of six (includingchoreographer Mochel) hurl themselves through some 21 action-packedvignettes in the Next Lab's arena-like 40-seat black box theaterspace.
The fight sequences, enacted without dialogue, range from comicto tragic and brutal to beautiful, Bullard said.
"I've always directed a very physical kind of theater," said the26-year-old Bullard, whose staging of "Bouncers" at the Next Labgarnered critical kudos as well as a Joseph Jefferson citation forhis direction.
Mochel, 25, who practiced martial arts during high school andcollege, is a member of the Society of American Fight Directors, aninternational alliance of stage combatants and choreogra phers.Hedirected a fight-filled precursor to Next Lab's show a couple ofyears back at the Actors Project and recently served as fightchoreographer for "The Song of Jacob Zulu" at Steppenwolf.
"I see stage combat as a magic show," Mochel said. "All ofthestage combatants I ever met, (or) a lot of them, were coming froma macho viewpoint (like) jousting at the Renaissance Faire. Thatsort of thing never excited me. I saw it much more as a magictrick: Howdo you hide the move? How do you change the move or thescene to awe the audience?"
Elements of clowning, gymnastics, juggling, modern dance andpuppetry - the last named in theform of a large Chinese dragon thattakes five performers to operate - will also be incorporated into theshow.
The show's fight sequences - played out against an auralbackground of rock and classical music - are intriguingly varied.One is succintly entitled "21 Weapons in 3 Minutes." Another fighttakes place in the dark using rapiers and flashlights. Yet another,dubbed "Relentless," depicts a brutal beating while "Tumblers"showcases the troupe's gymnastic and modern dance talents.
"This production has the most intricate, complicated anddifficult swordsman's work I've ever done or seen in 10 years,"Mochel said.
Yet the pair insisted that at no time during the course of theshow is the cast in any danger of actual physical harm. Whilechoreographing the fights, if a move proved dangerous, it wasexcised, Mochel confided. So, by curtain time, any potential forinjury has been eliminated.
"Some things that look the most dangerous are really the mosteasy to perform and some things that look very easy are really themost dangerous. That's where your realize that stage combat isreally illusion of the first rate," Bullard said.
"We know what they (the audience) expect from stage combat.They think they've seen it all," Bullard said. "So, it's reallyimportant to us to show them what they maybe didn't realize waspossible."
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