Somewhere deep within the minds of Communication seniors Ned Baker and Alex Tey exists an alternate reality of Northwestern’s campus, where students have swordfights in the Sculpture Garden and all-out brawls outside University Library, complete with chocolate pudding and water balloons.
Such fantasies set the scene of “Showdown: The Northwestern Epic Stunt Spectacular,” an interactive theatrical performance organized by Baker and Tey during Wildcat Welcome Week this year. “It was a satirical, mockumentary-like exaggerated version of ourselves,” Baker says. “In a world where violence isn’t totally out of the ordinary, to see a fight scene going on, it’s like a little bit of a cartoonish, satirical version of Northwestern.”
“Showdown” was a sequel to “Treasure Island: 3D,” which the two produced in 2010. These shows not only gave Baker and Tey creative license to manipulate reality, but also allowed them to exercise skills in the area of theatre in which they specialize: stage combat. The two are certified as actor combatants through the Actors Gym, part of the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston. They met during their freshman year in a theatre tech class. Their first conversation was about the “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!” show at Disney World. The two later decided to take the stage combat class where they bonded even more.
Tey and Baker learned stage combat from Chuck Coyl, an instructor at the Actors Gym and the president of the Society of American Fight Directors. Coyl is a Fight Master – the highest level of fight certification. He says that working with Northwestern students is unique, because not all are focused on pursuing acting careers. “Somebody that may want to be a stage manager may have more of an interest in how to run a fight call, or how to train their eye to be able to observe whether somebody is performing something in a safe manner or not.”
One of his other students, Communication junior Samantha Egle, says that she wants to explore stage managing, writing and fight directing. She also says she enjoys having fight choreography in her “bag of tricks.”
Categories of combat include knife, single sword, small sword, rapier and dagger, quarterstaff and more. Baker and Tey prefer to go unarmed. The list is limited only by imagination, but each requires special training to make the scene safe and believable. “[Violence design] is not just punching someone in the face,” Egle says. “People think that the fight exists as something that’s separate, when it really needs to be one integral part of the whole process.” Although for Egle, Baker and Tey, violent theatre is a specialty, they have never been seriously injured during a performance or rehearsal. Coyl says he taught them to be “in control of their art form.” They learned how to fall, hold a weapon, give a partner physical cues (initially make eye contact, but then switch to the area you intend to strike) and make the “knap” sound that is expected on impact.
Tey says he has always been interested in the kinesthetic aspects of theater, while Baker became an actor and a fan of professional wrestling during his teenage years. Both are into roughhousing, and grew up on comic books and action movies. Although both are anti-violence in real life, they say they are fascinated by the psychological and rhetorical implications of stage fighting. “I don’t think you could do a funny scene with a knife,” Baker says.
Tey compares fight choreography to memorizing a dance routine. In stage combat, safety, coordination and communication are top priorities. “The idea is that we are working in tandem to create an illusion,” Tey says. “The whole thing is figuring out what you’re putting out into the world and what people are getting from it.”