Now when I say drawing, I am of course referring to drawing the attack. By way of generating an opening for an opponent to attack. Not so obviously of course that you are giving away the opening but subtle enough to lure someone in let’s say. What does drawing have to do with the art of stage combat I hear you ask!
Before I answer that let’s take it back a bit. There is an aspect of staging attacks in staged violence that always makes me cringe. The moment when an actor ‘cues’ for an attack and the fellow actor is choreographed to avoid. There is inevitably that ‘eggy moment’ where the attacking actor at the apex of the cue is either thinking – “why aren’t you moving? I’m trying to attack” or the receiving actor is thinking – “why aren’t you attacking I’m waiting here to move”.
My experience is that the receiver is waiting for something to ‘feel real’ (an attack that makes them feel like they should move), and the attacker is trying hard to honour the system i.e. I’ve cued so you need to move, therefore I am not going to continue the attack until you move. But for some reason the illusion of attack and avoid always falls down in the early stages. There usually appears to be this stop start thing going on.
To me this is where drawing can really help us. Let’s look at a slash with a sword and a jump back to avoid as an example. As an actor my line of thinking has always been put the focus of my work on the ‘other’ so if we combine that thinking with drawing and I am the receiver I will already be prepping my body to jump back as the attacking actor moves into cue. This means as they hit the apex, I will already be jumping back thus drawing them into the slash because I have created space for them to unleash and create a powerful slash. Indirectly I am giving them permission and time.
To be continue…
