Lockdown

Oof. It’s been a heck of a long year, these past nine months or so since my last entry. Fall actually got me in trouble a bit, over-extending myself. Between the book deadline, directing a show, and multiple fight choreography gigs, I short-changed the time and brainpower and sleep required to do my best work […]

Fall Cornucopia

My horn of plenty overfloweth! A professional life, especially one associated with the gig economy, is always a balancing act. Even before you add in family and other considerations, there’s the uncertain dates on gigs, the auditioning for multiple overlapping projects in the assumption you won’t get most of them (and the pleasant yet panic-inducing […]

Spring Projects

The end of my first year teaching at Case Western! Grades are in (nobody failed), teacher evals are in (I didn’t fail either, apparently), shows happened and nobody died doing my fights. I get points for that, right? It’s opening weekend for the musical (not the opera) Aida at Karamu House, which marks the first […]

Checking in and Sharing Links

    News of the Fightdesigner: Props stuff has been busy, after a lull that was partly explained when I realized I didn’t check my spam folder for all of February. Mixed in amongst the website contact messages about sexy singles, bitcoin, and increasing my web traffic were a few legitimate rental inquiries, most of […]

Falling on Ice and on Video

Tis the season for ice yet again! Record-setting cold here in the upper midwest, but right before that it warmed up enough for some of the snow to melt, and some rain to fall, so sidewalks and other non-salted areas became sheets of ice. And with that, once again I’ve become a published expert on […]

Video Updates for the Holidays

As we head into the holiday season, I leave you with a few new video entries for my YouTube channels. First and most freshly updated, a bit on the Tinker Line swords from Cas/Hanwei, in their various iterations:   I’ve shared various in-progress thoughts about these swords here over the years, but now you can […]

Paddy Prequel

As we head into the last few days of registration for the 2018/19 Paddy Crean International Workshop, I can share one of my projects from the last one. I’ve shared the 2min montage reel before, but this one’s more of a documentary style piece. Both were requested by Artistic Director Scott Witt, and were part […]

1911s and more

  PewTube Episode II is now live, after more than a day of arguing with YouTube to get it to upload.   Currently trying to chase down Fire Marshals – State was closed for Veteran’s Day, then today said to try City, who is out… but folks at Cleveland Playhouse were talking about possible issues […]

PewTube!

I’ve been meaning to get this going for years… my hope is to be able to post something weekly, but we’ll see how long I can keep that up. The teaser above dropped last week…. and here’s the first video:   Subscribe, comment, share, ask… I don’t get any money off these, but just want […]

Side-project Swords

We all have things we do to ground ourselves. Call it procrastination, or centering, or meditation, or just a hobby. Sometimes we turn to mental escapism, through movies or video games or novels, or to physical escapism, getting out in nature or otherwise away from home or office. So long as they don’t reach the […]