This is Stuff You Like, I'm Jill Bearup and my current hobby / obsession is fake
fighting. Not the pro wrestling kind, like, the stage combat kind. Because actual
fighting is scary, but pretending to kick the snot out of people with swords or
nunchucks or Escrima is not just fun it's like Super Duper Fun. So you should
come with me on a journey: not like a figurative X factor style journey but a
literal actual journey to Sandwich Kent where I went on the Academy of
Performance Combat's intensive summer course, Advanced level. And I took my
camera. I think we've got to call this day one. day zero was yesterday when we all
arrived then we did some rolling there was there
was rolling, there was also a game called the circle of death where we had to spar
with the apprentices. So that was a fun time. warm-up starts at 9:00 and then
we're all gonna sweat horribly but also learn some weapons so it's gonna be good.
It's the end of the fight choreography part of day one which was found weapons
and nunchucks so it was found weapons in the morning
and nunchucks in the afternoon. We all hit ourselves with nunchucks a lot and
we hit each other with nunchucks and that was also good. For found weapons
we're kind of set up in the gym and so we do things like swing on ropes and hit
each other with weights and it's super fun. We learned all of our found weapons
choreography this morning and then this afternoon we learned how to use
nunchucks and then we learned the entirety of our nunchucks choreography
too. This day last year according to Facebook and I have no reason to assume
that it's lying I had just passed all of my Basic exams
and so it's kind of weird that a year later I'm doing the Advanced Course and
I'm like yeah I'm doing okay. The light is looking really good in here
and I am actually quite impressed all right it is day two. I think it's 18th
century smallsword and something else. Not gonna lie I was not very good at my
first foray into 18th century smallsword. I don't feel like I'm very good at
swords in general but this one is particularly difficult. Still we shall
see. Everything kind of aches. [horrible shoulder cracking sound] Nunchuck is apparently a very shoulder
heavy sport. So as you can probably tell from the state of my hair it's now the
end of day two in which we went over our nunchucks and our found weapons fights
and we learned our 18th century smallsword fight. This evening I'm going to a
kung fu workshop but it's only for an hour so I figure I can go and probably
not die. So it's day three and I'm coming to you from the gym basically because I
don't want to disturb people because it's only about a quarter past 7 in
the morning. Last night we did kung fu... as it turns out we're much quicker at
picking up the martial applications than we are at katas. who'd a thunk?
Today is Wednesday which is massage day so in the afternoon we break early
before dinner and pummel the crap out of each other. it's pretty good. Today we are
learning Sai vs. double Escrima. smallsword is not as difficult as I
remembered but it's still very difficult it's a very technical and precise and
dainty kind of weapon and I am not really any of these things I'll be
honest but I try. It's Thursday morning I'm in the Rose Garden and owww. So
Wednesday afternoon is always a fun time and by a fun time I mean incredibly
painful but you do feel better afterwards, because we take an hour and
pair up and do massage on each other... one part of which was so painful that I
reflexively tried to knee my partner in the head. Anyway
yesterday we learned all but five moves of our Sai vs. Double Escrima
fight and we learned the entirety of our unarmed fight which is two versus one in
a confined space. Originally we were going to be doing case of rapiers which
is one rapier in each hand, or rapier and buckler which is like a little shield
versus rapier and cloak but they decided to go with unarmed 2v1 in close
quarters instead and it's so fun. Yeah... feeling pretty good still much less achy
than basic so I don't know if I'm fitter or just more practiced or if I'm just
not bending my knees enough. It's probably a combination of all three to
be honest. Never mind. Alright it is Friday which
means it's exam day well exam day part one and two, parts
three four and five are on Saturday. There are birds because we're outside.
Samson the cat is also outside but he doesn't want to come over he doesn't
want to sit with us. So today we're doing our Nunchuck exam and also our found
weapons in the gym exam which is a really cool one because the examiner
sits in the middle you know on a spinny chair and the fight takes place all the
way around the gym. I have now learned four scripts. It's
strange I find that learning scripts with the fight choreography means
learning the script and the choreography is easier. That's odd to me but I'll take it.
Last year I think when I looked at my
footage I went mmm I fight like an angry duck. Like if there's a vibe going on
there at Basic it's definitely 'this duck is very very angry'. This year all of my
partners are women and several of them are shorter than me and so for things
like the nunchuck fight especially I'm fighting Liv and Liv is quite petite
and also seems to know what she's doing and so I'm there
flailing around and so I've upgraded from angry duck to angry baby giraffe
because it's just kind of limbs everywhere
probably baby giraffes are more dangerous than Ducks so... sure. By the end
of this week I will have been doing stage combat for 53 weeks and hopefully
I will have 11 different stage combat qualifications: 3 Basic, 3 at
Intermediate and 5 at advanced so that's quite exciting. I was saying last
night to one of my roommates that this is one of my favorite places to be and
one of the reasons for that is that it feels very safe. Which sounds ridiculous
because yesterday I got hit in the head with some nunchucks. What I mean by safe
is that everybody's looking out for your best interests and I feel like weird and
creepy wouldn't last very long around here. There's a fight which is unarmed
two versus one in a confined space so we're in one of
the ladies changing rooms and one of the moves that fight is that I as a person
B in the choreography get punched in the groin which is a very strange piece
of choreography to do where the other person basically puts their arm between
your legs and taps you on the backside to make the sound so it's like so they
put their arm through and they go [tap] and then you react as if they have actually
smacked you in the groin. In stage combat you end up touching people like very
intimately because you're like... grabbing and choking it's a little bit uncomfortable
at first and then you're just you know that's fine. Because everybody's fine
with it and nobody's weird about it and if you can't do something then they just
change it. It's a very collaborative place and it's a very respectful place
even though... like the preferred method of greeting is something like you come up
and you go [punch] and they go OWWW. It's like this weird call-and-response thing and I love it.
Because it's not a competition and because everybody wants everybody else
to do well it's such a nice place to be it's so supportive and lovely and warm
and you know I mean technically you're acting like you're fighting each other
but for it to be a good fight you actually have to be cooperating really
really closely. Well it's Saturday and I'm kind of sad because I mean we've
done two exams already and I think they both went ok so that was good... you may
notice I have a little bit of a sore throat mm-hmm a little bit too much
dramatic screaming while practicing dying what can I say? I'm kind of sad
though because even though it means that today we have our three more exams and
then we're finished and that means everything's good
hopefully...mmmmph.
I want to stay. I can't stay, because they're gonna kick us all out
and then go off to other places but ah, I love it here very much. I'll be very glad
to get back to my family and my cat and my bed and my duvet but put it this way
when you come here you get to fight, like, six hours a day you don't have to cook
or wash up or do any cleaning, you also don't really have to go anywhere because
even if you go to the pub in the evening your life is contained within maximum
quarter-mile radius and I went to the pub on the first night but all the other
nights I have been too tired. Our found weapons fight in the gym went well we
did a script from the Female of the Species
our nunchuck fight where we did The Mummy Returns was also a lot of fun I
wore a lot of eyeliner I then tried to take the eyeliner off with a paper towel.
My eyes went bright red they were not looking good at 4:30 this morning but I
woke up at 7:00 and they seemed to be okay. But I'm not wearing contact lenses
for any of my fights today. I'm looking forward to the exams being over but I
don't really want it to finish I'm having too much fun.
And we're back we're home we're done! Yeah! You want to know how I did? We did
five exams and we got graded twice for each one once by ACTT and once by the APC
which just happened to reside in the body of the same person at the time. I got
five merits in ACTT: 5 merits mmm and then for the APC - look at these things I I
just love the logbooks, I love the book. I mean it's all going online now but I like
the book anyway - I got four lower firsts and a 2:1. See this one for the smallsword?
Particularly proud of this one. so the 2:1 in the nunchuck fight was
because after three moves I froze like a deer in the headlights because I forgot
that the next move was mine. But I picked it back up without breaking character so
I did not fail so so I you know these things happen. The 76 in smallsword I am
particularly proud of though I think quite a lot of credit has to go to
Maddie my fight partner, who is both very very good as you can probably tell from
the footage but also very very patient with those of us who are... less good. So on
the Saturday night after dinner we all got our log books back and went oh
that's what I got and we all went to the pub. They said what are you drinking? I said, 'You got any tea?' and they said yes so I drank three pots of
tea and then I had some cheesy chips and I had a fabulous time. And then I went to
bed and on Sunday I got up and I drove home. And I'm happy to be home but also
kind of sad that I'm not still there. That being said physically speaking I
was done in so I slept really well on Sunday night. As you have probably
gathered I loved stage combat a lot. Funnily enough I think the exams
are actually part of that because you end up with the qualification at the end
of it. Now admittedly in my current lines of
work not a particularly relevant qualification, but you never know, so
watch this space and I may yet find a use for them. I hope you liked this video
if you did please share it because sharing is caring. I hope you found it
interesting or maybe useful if you've never been to one of these courses
before and you were considering it (come, they're really good!) I have a couple of other videos on the
subject of stage combat and fighting in movies so you should check those out too
and hopefully I will see you soon. Especially if you're in the APC because,
like, you need 10 qualifications at a single level to be an Actor Combatant
and I mean what can I say? I'm already halfway there