If there’s one take-away lesson from the senior thesis presentation “Have At You Now!”, on display this weekend at the ’92 Theater, it’s never to pick a fight with Sean Chin ’09 or any of his fellow trained stage combat experts. Together they produce the unique, exhilarating experience of sitting through a nearly uninterrupted, hour-long dramatic climax of epic proportions.
Chin’s collection of choreographed fight scenes, from such diverse theatrical settings as Victorian England, ancient Greece and feudal Japan, are able to convince the audience that actions not only speak louder than words, but often take the place of words, and are sometimes embedded in the words themselves. Even without a unifying plotline or overwhelming context behind the battle sequences, the ensemble cast is able to evoke more visceral shock, laughter and applause than practically any full-length drama I’ve seen.
In one of the most gripping segments, a performed excerpt from Homer’s “Iliad,” combatants Jake Hunt ’12 (Ajax) and Jermaine Lewis ’09 (Hector) have no dialogue but instead react to a description of the scene read by a narrator (Lila Becker ’12). Heavenly “messengers” (Anna Martin ’09 and Sean Richards ’10) aid in the dramatization of the scene by carrying tossed spears through the air to their destinations, allowing the sequence to be enacted in slow motion. By bringing the action down to the pace of the text, every one of the performers’ carefully constructed movements is as fully perceptible physically as it is on paper.
In a refined dramatic production, the highly visible messengers employed here would be fully concealed behind cloaks or replaced by wires, so as to give an impression of the battle’s authenticity. But as Chin explicitly states, both in the first sentence of the show’s program and in his spoken introduction, this is in no way intended to be a production. Chin and his actors create their own authenticity by revealing all the mechanisms of staged combat–to the extent that the audience can sometimes see the performers slapping the floor mats to provide sound effects for hard-hitting blows.
Yet while none of these excerpted demonstrations are set, costumed or propped as they would be in their original performance, the full weight of their drama is imparted through the actors’ powerful deliveries. Despite being clothed in black spandex on a black mat surrounded by the fully lit and undisguised black ’92 Theater walls, the audience can still be adequately convinced that Sabina Friedman-Seitz ’11 is fighting as Joan of Arc in medieval France, defending her honor against the gynophobic Charles the Dauphin (Richards).
Placed in Shin’s context of war heroes and honor-defending nobles, a battle between two cowardly swordsmen in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” becomes one of the most absurdly hilarious. Cheryl Tan ’11 and Marlene Sim ’11 play the two resistant opponents, set up to duel by the smirking Sir Toby (John Gallagher ’12). Their terrified jabs and retreats provide divinely amusing slapstick humor–not lost on the observing Toby, who laughs along with the audience.
Much of this humor, along with the rest of the emotions evoked by these sequences, is propelled by the exaggerated nature of every action in the show. Chin here makes a persuasive argument for more intricately choreographed combat in all forms of theater. In essence, the figurative punch a play has for its viewer may be closely connected with the actors’ abilities to throw physical punches.
Ultimately, none of the words in this review can accurately describe the spectacle that is “Have At You Now!” It is a true tour de force virtually guaranteed not to bore you, even if you disagree with its blatant promotion of violence. It is the first of its kind at Wesleyan, with a stated mission to “make the actors look totally badass.” Go see it.
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