While playing D'artagnan junior Jacob Zuniga didn't have a hard time feeling at home with his character. His connection to the character also helped him in sword training. "It didn't take much preparation," Zuniga said. "I could relate to him alot on certain levels. I want to be all those things towards people, be an honest genuine nice guy."
While playing D’artagnan junior Jacob Zuniga didn’t have a hard time feeling at home with his character. His connection to the character also helped him in sword training. “It didn’t take much preparation,” Zuniga said. “I could relate to him alot on certain levels. I want to be all those things towards people, be an honest genuine nice guy.”
Skylar Reddington

All for one, one for all

How the theater department’s latest play incorporates the art of sword fighting
Byline photo of Shrinidhi Sridhar
Byline photo of Aradhya Bharti
Shrinidhi Sridhar and Aradhya Bharti
October 23, 2024

Billowing capes, closely fitted hats and with intricate wrist movements of sword handling, the theater company orchestrated the story of ‘The Three Musketeers’ for this year’s fall show performed from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13.

Throughout the show, sword fighting was incorporated into the performance to compliment and authentically enact the Elizabethan era.

“It brought so much tension to the performance,” junior Charlotte Polnaszek said. “The audience was left wondering who was going to win and what was going to happen next the whole time. It added such an engaging hook to the show.”

The company learned from a professional instructor, H. Russ Brown, to ensure the scenes looked genuine.

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“Bringing in someone who knew how to sword fight took off the stress of having to learn ourselves or figuring out how to as a company,” senior Zoey Hatter said. “We had someone who was very confident in what he does, and it just made it feel way better than improvising with a sword.”

 

With a leading cast of mainly boys, playing a man didn’t come a struggle for senior Georgia Miller. She had to work on her mannerisms, and body language to help with the characterization. “Porthos is written to be a man,” Miller said. “We’ve kind of taken Porthos as just Porthos. It doesn’t matter if Porthos is a man or a woman playing a man. It shouldn’t matter because the character is the character anyways so we’ve taken a sort of androgynous take on it.” (Skylar Reddington)

Training sessions lasted around eight hours a day with the cast mastering techniques such as the Spanish Seven and learning how to account for spatial awareness and eye contact.

“Before this, the only sword training I had was playing swords with my brothers,” junior Mckenzie Hecht said. “Having this training made me feel more professional and prepared to put on a fight that an audience would think is cool and not just something that’s made up.”

Once they mastered the techniques, cast members worked together to intricately choreograph the fight scenes.

“Whenever you’re in theater, you’re normally getting told what to do all the time, which is what I am used to,” Hatter said. “But it felt freeing to be able to have that freedom of what you think your character would do.”

Despite facing the challenge of a shorter preparation time compared to previous productions, the cast was determined to pull through.

“Even though we had less time to prepare, we really rallied together to get the show ready in such a short time,” Polnaszeck noted. “Everything came together beautifully and I feel like this is the best company we’ve had in a while.”