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Posted Dec. 11, 2009, 1:05 p.m. ET
Stage Notes: Fight Fest
By Tom Murrin
The Brick Theater in Williamsburg reigns supreme in coming up with original themes for theater festivals. Here it's the art of stage combat, and a classy group of co-curators has raised the bar. There's Tim Haskell, creator of Roadhouse and The Jaded Assassin; Abby Marcus and Qui Nguyen from Vampire Cowboys Theater Company, who have given us Fight Girl Battle World and Soul Samurai; along with artists from the Brick, like the prolific Jeff Lewonczyk. They have put together three weeks of nine plays featuring stage violence that should satisfy anyone who appreciates a well-choreographed live action battle to the death. I spoke with Michael Gardner, co-artistic director of the Brick, co-curator of the festival, and creator of one of the plays.
Hi Michael. How did this latest Brick festival come about?
It was an inevitable sequence of events. A lot of the artists at the Brick were friends and colleagues of the prominent fight directors and fight companies in town. It seemed like fight theater is becoming a genre in New York, and we felt it needed a festival, a voice.
Tell me about the show you wrote and directed, The Ninja Cherry Orchard.
It's a sequel to The King Fu Importance of Being Earnest.
And that would be the Oscar Wilde drawing room comedy with fights?
It informed the characters in it, so that you saw the subtle hostility between them. Here we have Chekov's Cherry Orchard occurring, and a Ninja warrior coming to slaughter everybody.
I'll bet Chekov didn't see that coming.
I will defend it as a Chekovian conceit, it's suppressed. The Ninja warrior in the room is the unspoken danger. The characters in our Cherry Orchard are pretending that there is no Ninja, just as the characters in Chekov's Cherry Orchard are pretending that their problems don't exist.
Fair enough. Now tell me about the Fight Fest.
It lasts for three weeks, and there are nine main stage shows.
How many showings does each play have?
Most have four; it's between three to six presentations on different nights.
I've seen all of Haskell's plays, and a few of the Vampire Cowboy shows too, and there's always a lot of comedy, along with the action.
A lot of them are comedies. Tim Haskell's show, Last Life, is not a comedy. Street fighting is its feature. One reason for the festival was to shine a spotlight on fight directors as artists, because often they are looked at as technicians. So you will see an array of fight styles. There's a swashbuckling play, from the Erroll Flynn era, The Buccaneers. Jeff Lewonczyk's Craven Monkeys and the Mountain of Fury involves animal fighting.
How's that?
Fights between monkeys and monsters and mythological creatures. Qui Nguyen is doing the fight direction for that play, as well as mine. Then there's Deck the Hallmans!, an improvised domestic violence comedy with a Christmas theme.
You seem to have all the fight styles covered; trash cans, chainsaws, catfights.
We're trying to promote fight plays as a new genre of theater. Haskell calls them "fightsicals." Like in a musical, where the story goes up to a certain point, and the only way it can go further is with a song; well, it's the same here. At some point, the story needs to express itself violently.
The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (212) 352-3101, Dec. 1-20. $18.
Hi Michael. How did this latest Brick festival come about?
It was an inevitable sequence of events. A lot of the artists at the Brick were friends and colleagues of the prominent fight directors and fight companies in town. It seemed like fight theater is becoming a genre in New York, and we felt it needed a festival, a voice.
Tell me about the show you wrote and directed, The Ninja Cherry Orchard.
It's a sequel to The King Fu Importance of Being Earnest.
And that would be the Oscar Wilde drawing room comedy with fights?
It informed the characters in it, so that you saw the subtle hostility between them. Here we have Chekov's Cherry Orchard occurring, and a Ninja warrior coming to slaughter everybody.
I'll bet Chekov didn't see that coming.
I will defend it as a Chekovian conceit, it's suppressed. The Ninja warrior in the room is the unspoken danger. The characters in our Cherry Orchard are pretending that there is no Ninja, just as the characters in Chekov's Cherry Orchard are pretending that their problems don't exist.
Fair enough. Now tell me about the Fight Fest.
It lasts for three weeks, and there are nine main stage shows.
How many showings does each play have?
Most have four; it's between three to six presentations on different nights.
I've seen all of Haskell's plays, and a few of the Vampire Cowboy shows too, and there's always a lot of comedy, along with the action.
A lot of them are comedies. Tim Haskell's show, Last Life, is not a comedy. Street fighting is its feature. One reason for the festival was to shine a spotlight on fight directors as artists, because often they are looked at as technicians. So you will see an array of fight styles. There's a swashbuckling play, from the Erroll Flynn era, The Buccaneers. Jeff Lewonczyk's Craven Monkeys and the Mountain of Fury involves animal fighting.
How's that?
Fights between monkeys and monsters and mythological creatures. Qui Nguyen is doing the fight direction for that play, as well as mine. Then there's Deck the Hallmans!, an improvised domestic violence comedy with a Christmas theme.
You seem to have all the fight styles covered; trash cans, chainsaws, catfights.
We're trying to promote fight plays as a new genre of theater. Haskell calls them "fightsicals." Like in a musical, where the story goes up to a certain point, and the only way it can go further is with a song; well, it's the same here. At some point, the story needs to express itself violently.
The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (212) 352-3101, Dec. 1-20. $18.
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