Cassio's sword has had a presence in this blog for a few weeks. It first made its photo appearance on July 14. Later there were some problems with the sheath so we had to scrap that. I had to make adjustments to my belt to hold it without the sheath... and so on... and so on... one little annoying problem after another. It wasn't a stage combat sword, but I loved it so. I thought it fit Cassio so well and I was willing to do what it took to get it through the show. It was fairly sturdy. It seemed to be holding up. It was developing a little wiggle but we looked at it and it seemed like it could make it.
Well... here is what remains of Cassio's sword...
THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD ONLY USE REAL STAGE COMBAT WORTHY WEAPONRY.
The story about the break is even crazier. It happened during the show. It happened during the drunken fight. It happened while I had two swords and was fighting two guys at once. I swipe at one guy's head and he ducks. With this particular sword in my right hand, I swipe high and across my body from right to left. As the bottom of my right hand hits my left shoulder, finishing the move, the momentum somehow makes the blade snap at the handle (CHEAP SWORD) and the blade goes flying through the air about 40 feet. Now all I am holding is the handle.
Literally, in about one second, while still moving through the fight, I analyze the following things... (I'm not even kidding... this all went through my mind in about one second...)
1) No one has been killed or seriously injured... I can keep fighting.
2) I am now holding the handle and nothing else. Is this handle helpful or not at this point? I decide it is not and drop it.
3) Meanwhile, I am still moving into the next move without a pause or anything... however... I ONLY HAVE ONE SWORD NOW. So I have to, on the fly, alter my move while my fellow actor is doing a strike towards my head.
The cool thing about theatre though... if you are working with good individuals... you are a team... you are an ensemble... you have each other's back.
So... check out this chain of events...
1) The guy swinging at my head still goes for it but, I can tell when our swords hit that he pulled back on his speed just a touch. Not so much that the audience could tell, but enough to make sure that my one sword parry (which usually was a two sword parry) would be ok.
2) Another guy who then knocks into my back changes his positioning ever so slightly. Why? Because I am about to drive him into the ground, but it is rather close to where the dropped handle is. So we pull the drive to the ground downstage just a touch.
3) Another guy has a sense that the blade may come in handy later... or at least need to be cleared from the stage, so, in the commotion of the fight, he positions himself close to the blade.
4) Normally, once I drive this guy to the ground, I start pounding him in the face which Othello comes and stops. Well, I tried to communicate with a slight hesitation on my first punch of this guy that this fight needed to end. Othello sensed that and broke it up two hits early.
NOW COMES THE BEST PART
Later in the scene, (in the REHEARSED version of the play where SWORDS WEREN'T BREAKING,) Othello would eventually command me to get up off of the ground and he would take my sword and thrust the blade into the ground at my feet and tell me that I was demoted. So Cassio was left standing there crushed, defeated, demoted, shamed and broken with the sword sticking in the ground in front of him. It was a cool image.
Well... Othello motioned to the guy standing by the broken sword blade to bring it over to him. He then picked up the pieces of the handle. And at the moment where he demotes me, he tossed the broken pieces of sword onto the ground. Broken Cassio with his broken sword. It was the this beautiful symbolic moment. The best part was, I didn't see any of this happening... so when he dropped the broken sword at my feet, it was total surprise... and shock... just to see it laying there in pieces in front of me.
Then it was up to Iago and me to figure out how to go from there and I ended up using the broken pieces in one of my lines. This particular line had always been one of the hardest lines for me to really connect with. BUT... that day... with the broken sword... the words just came... and I eventually walked off stage, with these pieces of broken sword, and I felt like I FINALLY found that one particular line. And I don't know if I will ever say those words, with that kind of connection ever again.
Awesome...
AND BAD.... BAD BAD BAD
Why bad? Because that damn sword should never have been on the stage in the first place. I know better than that. Hell, I think we all knew better than that. And we got away with one. No one got hurt. And, I have to tell you, I will never do that again. Even if it means that I just have to supply my own weapons. Heck... I would never let my students use that weapon on stage so why did I use it? We THOUGHT it would hold up but we didn't KNOW it would. You can't play games like that with stage combat. A moment of thanks for the gods of theatre.
On a better note... a couple of reviewers have written about the show and they both mention the quality of the fights. I take a lot of pride in that because I was a large part of the crafting of the fight choreography.
Speaking of reviews... we'll see if any more get posted tomorrow (Tuesday) and then I will write a post about reviews... how I deal with them... etc. I'll also provide links to the reviews so you can read them yourself.
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