Entry Three - Fight Choreography (Part One)

Today’s session was focussed primarily on choreography, and covered three scenes: Edmund’s arrival at the Witch’s palace, Edmund’s rescue at the hands of Aslan’s followers, and Aslan’s execution.

The first of the three scenes only required a little bit of work, but to make sure the scene looks impressive, and also to ensure cast safety it helps to choreograph the motions. In this scene Edmund arrives at the Witch’s palace and wanders through her courtyard, encountering many stone statues of her previous victims. He then approaches what he perceives to be a stone wolf, before it suddenly leaps up and scares him, introducing himself as Maugrim: Captain of the Secret Police.

Edmund has been examining the stone figures throughout the courtyard, and so grows in confidence as he moves to the wolf. He leans in close, and then receives a shock when Maugrim’s eyes suddenly open, and the wolf grabs him by the wrist.

In the previous entry I mentioned that Edmund receives a lot of rough usage, and that continued here. The White Witch contemplates the prophesy; wondering whether it can be fulfilled if only three of the four thrones in Cair Paravel are filled. Having decided that Edmund is of no further use to her she decides to kill him, but at that moment Aslan’s followers arrive, and spirit Edmund away just in time.

This moment is done differently in each adaptation, and so it gives Tom our fight director (also Father Christmas) a chance to play around. Consequently there is a little bit of swordplay, which adds more excitement to the scene – The White Witch raises her sword above her head and starts to bring it down, but then one of Aslan’s soldiers intercepts and blocks her sword with his own. It’s rather cinematic! There is then a brief scuffle, as one soldier fights with the Witch, another fights the Dwarf and a third snatches up Edmund and runs back to Aslan.

Whilst the fight was being worked out, we worked on another scene involving Peter and Edmund preparing for the battle. They receive the news that Aslan is nowhere to be found, but they have to prepare for the battle to come regardless. This is a scene that we’ve invented for this adaptation, but its significance became really clear as we worked on it during this session, Peter takes on the leadership role that has been laid out for him, and the two brothers are unified by their cause, having been at odds with one another since the start of the play (even before they arrived in Narnia).

We then returned to Edmund’s rescue, and ran the full scene. This lead to another dubious line, spoken by the White Witch: “I would like to have it done on the Stone Table. That is the proper place. That is where it has always been done before.” (More corpsing ensued!) Eventually we’ll stop finding these lines funny and there will be a lot more tension.

Then we moved onto Aslan’s execution, which had already been worked on before Christmas, but now the actual stabbing needed to be integrated. I’m not sure what blade we’ll be using in the actual performance yet, but for the purposes of this session we used Tom’s newly acquired gladius (a short sword, but a HUGE knife!) which looked very imposing when raised up in the air as a sacrificial weapon. During the scene the White Witch makes a mocking speech to Aslan, before bringing down the blade, and then she marches away in triumph, followed by her minions. The scene is filled with activity, as there are a lot of bodies on the stage (almost the whole ensemble is present to play the Witch’s army). Everyone swarms around Aslan, cackling and jeering at him, and then they all draw nearer as the Witch prepared to kill the great lion. At the moment of impact there is a brief silence, before the minions all cheer loudly, and then follow the Witch as she exits.

Two rehearsals into the New Year, and the show is really starting to take shape. It’s a very encouraging sign, and soon we’ll start to bring costumes, props and even set into play as well.

Quote of the day: “I am a big angry warrior” James Bush (Getting psyched up as he prepared for his fight with the Dwarf during Edmund's rescue)