LAKEWOOD — After being delayed for a couple of weeks due to the school football team making the quarter finals, Lakewood High School’s performances of “Robin Hood” will start running on Dec. 2.
The two-hour play starts at 7 p.m. not only on its debut night, but also on Dec. 3, 9 and 10, during which it will boast a completely new feature for LHS drama productions, in the form of choreographed fight scenes.
Bob Nydegger is qualified, but not certified, in the art of stage-fighting, but this has been enough for the veteran professional performer to pass on his knowledge to the nearly two dozen members of the student cast.
“Rules one through three are safety,” Nydegger said, as students practiced their sword-fighting scenes with wooden prop swords under his supervision. “The prop weapons should never make contact with the performers’ bodies, because they should be aiming the their own weapons at the other performers’ weapons.”
Given the relatively small size of the LHS stage, Nydegger has been especially conscious of preserving safety in the midst of scenes that can include up to a dozen difference fights at once.
“None of it is real fighting,” Nydegger said. “If it went as fast as a real fight, you wouldn’t even see it, and it’s angled so that it looks real, even though many of the strikes are close to a foot and a half away from making contact. The students have to keep focused and keep their adrenaline from taking over.”
At the same time, Nydegger praised the students for coming up with successful ideas for the fight scenes, and with modifying fight scenes whose choreography didn’t work as well on stage as it did on paper.
LHS seniors Jacob Peterson, Melody Costley and Sam Ward have done drama for all four years of high school, but even in roles as well-known as Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham, respectively, they’ve found this play to be a uniquely challenging experience.
“‘Clue’ had lots of dying, but no stage combat,” Costley said.
“You can actually vent your frustrations through the fights,” Ward said. “It’s great for our emotional and mental morale.”
Costley noted that the exact timing has proven difficult on occasion, as Ward admitted that getting carried away in the moment can be a risk, but once they’ve fine-tuned their performances, they agreed with Peterson that the play should offer satisfying escapism for their audiences.
“It’s good for them to watch and get away from their worries,” Peterson said. “We were part of the crew that restarted drama as an entirely new department in our freshman year. Now that we’re seniors, it’s the end of the beginning.”
