Meet the Fight Choreographers!

Hello Readers! We have had several full runs this past week, which were awesome. The team also rehearsed the opening and the closing dances. The dances are so vibrant! And the Big Bollywood finale is absolutely fantastic. The team also worked on the army maneuvers, choreographed by Alisha Menon, who’s playing Chitra. Watching the cast work in sync with each other was absolutely wonderful! The team also began working with the weapons that would be used in the fights and the formations. John Ellingson, Associate Artistic Director and our in house set & props designer, has done a wonderful job designing them. We’ll be talking to him in an upcoming post, so stay tuned.

This week we spoke to our extraordinary fight choreographers Kristen Mun and Alwynn Accuardi. They are so exceptionally talented! It’s hard to believe that the fighting isn’t real, they look so convincingly painful! Each nuance and expression has been exquisitely choreographed by Kristen and Alwynn. Their attention to detail is amazing! You can feel every stumble, every strike, and every clash of the weapons. It was wonderful talking to them and learning more about their process.

Kristen is what she calls a “Violence Designer”. She has been teaching and working in the field of theatrical combat for a little over 10 years. She is a certified teacher with Dueling Arts International, and trained with Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Resident Fight Choreographer Jon Toppo. She is currently based here in Portland, where she choreographs roughly 20 shows a year and conducts fight workshops for different educational establishments. In the past 4 years she has won 3 Drammy Awards and was the recent recipient of the Leslie O. Fulton Fellowship, which allowed her to start her own personal armory!

Ritu: What inspired you to get into fight choreography? Can you talk about your training?

Kristen: When I was in high school I did a show with fight choreography. The fight choreographer told me that I was quite skilled at it and if I was interested I could take a certification class and get college credits for it. I was about to start my freshman year, so I thought, “Why not?” It was fun and gave me something to do before the summer ended.

From there stage combat continued to follow me. I met my first mentor in undergrad and continued my certification, by using my spring and winter break to take workshops across the country. I’ve taken training workshops in Las Vegas, Gainesville, Chicago, Lake Tahoe, and Hawaii until I was certified as a teacher by the end of my senior year in college. I didn’t take that first stage combat class because I wanted to be a fight choreographer - I did it because it was so fun. It taught me discipline, strength, and allowed me to be creative.

My training included unarmed, quarterstaff, broadsword, sword and shield, rapier, rapier and dagger/ cloak/ buckler, and small sword. My teacher would tell us the history of each weapon and why it was used and when we would train our goal was to get the fight up to show speed as fast as we could. My training as a teacher focused on clarity of movement while my training as a fight choreographer focused on clarity of story. My mentor always told me “Be ready to throw your fight away if it does not serve the story.” You have to be flexible and adjust to your actors. Just because a move looks cool doesn’t mean it serves the story.

Ritu: Fight choreography is traditionally a very male dominated field, how has that influenced your work?

Kristen: When I began training I sometimes felt like I had to prove myself to my male classmates. But, I never felt that I had to prove myself to my teachers or mentors. In fact, my first teacher Gregory Hoffman would remind the boys not to hold back on me. He recognized that I was different from other students, but he never let me use it as a disadvantage. He told me, “You’re smaller than everyone, you have to learn how to move.” He taught me to hone in on my own strength, instead of trying to mimic someone else’s.

When I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival I assisted the resident fight choreographer Jon Toppo, and when I started with him he never wanted to call me his assistant. He would say, “This is Kristen. She’s my assistant, but I don’t think of her as my assistant. She is more like my colleague.” He and I worked as a team and he always valued my opinion. I had an enlightening moment with Toppo when we worked on Lynn Nottage’s, ‘Ruined’. We had to stage some violence that involved men and women and after we walked out of that rehearsal room, we went to grab a drink and he told me, “I am so glad I walked in to that room with a woman by my side.” Being a woman in a male dominated field that includes violence against women is a challenging and humbling position. I approach all my choreography with an open mind and heart, because I get to assist in telling a story that is often difficult to narrate. And I always jump at an opportunity to get to work with women who kick butt!

I am very blessed that Portland has embraced me into their theatre community. My first year working in Portland, I received a Drammy for my work on Danny in the Deep Blue Sea. A few years later I received the Portland Civic Theatre Guild’s, Leslie O. Fulton Grant to build my own personal armory. I wanted to give back to my community after that. That year I took on 2 assistants and started training them in all things, stage combat and fight choreography. Alwynn Accardi has been assisting me for 3 years and is more than my assistant. She is my friend and colleague. Alwynn and I have had many conversations about why it is so important to encourage women in the work that we do and that is why we are so grateful when we get to work on empowering shows, like Chitra.

Ritu: What is it about the story of Chitra that appeals to you?

Kristen: I love the story of Chitra, because of the message that it brings to young audiences. First, that girls can be tough and strong, second, that girls can be beautiful and elegant and third, girls don’t have to choose! You can be both. Chitra is what I think all female role models should be - beautiful, smart and strong.

Ritu: What kinds of styles have you used in choreographing the fights for this production?

Kristen: The fight choreography for Chitra is a blend of my own personal background in stage combat, the research that we did for the show, and then the personal style of the fighters. The list of styles and techniques include Aikido, Chahu, Japanese bo staff, Irish spear, French and Italian sword play, and a variety of mma techniques sprinkled throughout to give it flair.

Alwynn is a bundle of energy. It is wonderful to see her work around the stage. Her presence is so electrifying, that you’ll automatically be energized. We spoke about her experience with fight choreography, about Chitra and a host of other things.

Ritu: Can you tell me a little background and how you started working with Kristen?

Alwynn: I went to the Portland Actor’s Conservatory, and graduated in 2014. That year I worked on a production of ‘Cymbeline,’ which Kristen fight choreographed. I had also worked with her the summer before, and at one point I told her that I wished that I could do what she does! Then a few days later she asked me to speak to me, and got so worried that I was doing somethign wrong. But she basically said, “I’ve done 6 shows in 3 months by myself and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to train a couple of apprentices so that when I don’t want to do something, I’ll have people that I trust, because I trained them. I would love for you to be one these people. You can take some time to think about it” I responded immediately, saying “Umm, time taken. Yes please!” Why would you say NO to that.

My very dear friend Mary and I were her apprentices. That summer we started training and learning a bunch of different weapons, unarmed, quarter-staff, broad sword and rapier, and rapier and dagger. We have still not covered short sword. About six months after we started training, I started to choreograph my own fights! Then when Kristin got the script for this production, she said “I am probably gonna need somebody and I really want it to be you. It’s all about how girls can fight!”

Ritu: What about the story of Chitra that appeals to you?

Alwynn: I love it so much. I am so in love with it. I think it’s so wonderful. I really believe in the power of storytelling. And I really believe in the power of showing young girls that there are a million ways to do something and a million ways to be in the world, and just because we are raised in a society that tells us that there are 5 things we can do, doesn’t mean that’s true.

It’s been such an honor to be able to watch these kids work and watch them learn from each other. It’s been particularly special to watch the actors in the show who are Indian and who grew up with this story be able to be proud of their culture, and teach these other kids who have no background something new. I’m so happy that there is a platform for that, because there often isn’t and I think it’s so important. To be in a room with Anita and watch her work, and watching Alisha do her thing, I mean, it’s all amazing. The first time I saw the Bharatanatyam dance, I cried. It was so beautiful, and it was only like the fourth time they had done it! I wept. It was so stunning.

I am so excited and feel so fortunate to be a part of this really exciting production. The experience has been really good. Plus, this whole theatre company is amazing! Sarah Jane is incredible, listening to her talk and watching her work has been really, really inspiring. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with somebody who has been doing this for as long as she has, who is still excited to learn something new. There’s just not enough of that in the world, people who get excited to learn something new, to get out of their comfort zone, to see how other people do things. And doing that is just so important. And the curiosity that she has, and they all have, has been really fun to watch.

Ritu: The kids at NWCT are so talented. How was your experience working with them?

Alwynn: It’s been so, so great. I’ve worked with a lot of kids and sometimes, you gets kids, especially middle schoolers and teenagers, who just have no idea, how their limbs work. Do you know what I mean? Like they, just have no idea how tall they are, how long they are, they have no clue, they’re not in their bodies at all, they’re only in their heads. But this group of kids in particular are not really like that, which is always helpful. They all have a pretty good sense of their body. A lot of them are dancers, so when you work with people who understand how their body moves, it automatically makes it easier. Even if they have never fought before. They understand rhythm, they understand movement, and they understand the limits of your body. They are all so sweet and wonderful, really fun. Choreographing kids is really different, different from choreographing an adult, but in some ways, age is just a number.

Thank you so much Kristen and Alwynn for talking to us. It was wonderful talking to you both. Stay tuned for more updates on all our Chitra artists!