The first rule of Fight Club is "you do not talk about Fight Club." ~Tyler Durden

Objectives

• Campers will learn and practice a few simple stage-fighting moves that they can use in their plays at the festival and with their drama clubs back home
  

Warm ups

1: Sound machine เสียงสำหรับการต่อสู้(5 minutes) Sound is important for making a stage fight look real; no one fights completely quietly. This exercise gives participants practice making some appropriate sounds. Split the participants into five groups. Teach the following sounds and assign one sound to each group, ideally associating each sound with some kind of gesture from the leader.

a. Low grunt [UH!] - like from a punch to the stomach
b. High-pitched grunt/scream [ooiie!] - like from a hit to the groin
c. Medium-pitched grunt [jaah!] - simulates receiving headbutt
d. Effort grunt [ah] - simulate throwing a punch
e. Sharp clap - simulate taking a slap/punch

After each group has learned its sound, start giving signals to the various groups to make patterns with the sounds. Go slow at first with just one gesture per group at any time, but building up to having multiple groups going at once and some groups going repetitively (the claps can be good for percussion as long as that group does them clearly). An active leader can create quite the chorus of sound.

2: Demonstration แสดงการต่อสู้เป็นตัวอย่าง (2 or 3 minutes at most)
Show a choreographed fight. Pretend that one instructor is angry at the other for not helping during the sound machine exercise (which is somewhat automatically the case--there can only be one conductor of the machine). The prepared fight requires several hours of practice to make it as realistic as possible without having the instructors hurt themselves. Feel free to use moves that you won't be teaching, but be advised that many children will try to imitate such moves with or without instruction. Finish up by explaining that it doesn't really hurt because you were working together. This leads into the next warm-up exercise.

3: Push/pull interaction การต่อสู้โดยการดึงและการผลัก (5 minutes)
The purpose of this exercise is to help the participants understand that stage fighting is somewhat like a dance--it only works if both people involved do it at the same time. Start out by showing the instructors doing some form of ballroom dancing (hilarious if both are male). Demonstrate how one person's movements force the other to move forward, move backward, or even turn/twist. Once the participants have the general idea, have them stand up and partner off with someone of similar height. (If they have books or bags in the area, this is a good time to have them clear the practice space as well.) Have the partners face each other and hold their arms up and toward each other to clasp hands in an "A" frame. Emphasize the importance of having firm arms for the exercise. Noodle arms are no good (for American instructors, think of Dirty Dancing: "This is your dancing space; this is my dancing space"). Have them practice with one partner or the other 'steering' the pair back and forth. After a minute, have them start moving the arms in a bicycle motion with one person leaning forward and the other backward, as though the two are wrestling. It should only take a few minutes to establish the sense of cooperative fighting. Then it's time to start teaching fighting moves.

Teaching moves

General process:

1. Show the move at regular speed
2. Show it at 'slow motion'
3. Call particular attention to how to keep the person on the receiving end from actual harm.
4. Discuss which direction the move should come from relative to the audience to generate the better look.
5. Participants practice the appropriate sound to go with the move, as necessary/applicable.
6. Participants practice the move with their partners while the instructors give feedback about the participants' techniques.

The Slap ตบหน้า
This is the most basic stage fighting move, so instructors might want to begin with it. Other moves can be taught depending on the instructors' judgment. Have Person 1 (P1) and Person 2 (P2) stand facing each other, a few feet apart. To judge the appropriate distance, P1 should extend his arm straight out at head level, and P2's nose should be just a few centimeters from P1's fingertips. Emphasize the distance, since it will look obviously fake if the two people are too far apart, but can cause actual damage if they're standing too closely together. (For a joke while demonstrating, the instructor playing P1 can swing back and forth many times, while P2 calmly stands still and jokes about his human fan making a pleasantly cool breeze.) As P1 swings his downstage (direction toward the audience) hand directly in front of P2, P2 should turn his head upstage (direction away from the audience), in the direction of the swing's movement. P2 can generate the appropriate sound effect by clapping his hands at a low position and then grasping his downstage hand against his "struck" cheek (easiest method: start with the downstage hand slightly below the upstage hand and slap them together as the downstage hand moves up toward the cheek). While demonstrating this, build it up one element at a time and ask the students if it looks realistic yet. Start with just the swing. Encourage suggestions until you have added the head movement, the clap, and the lowness/masking movement for the clap. Have the students practice for a few minutes. Then, before showing them the next move, have them decide which looks better: an upstage slap or a downstage slap (don't worry about using the terms). Most students will generally reply that the downstage slap looks better because it's closer to the audience (main downside: it turns both actors away from the audience; not necessarily a problem).

Basic punch to the head ใช้มือตีหัว
This is pretty much identical to the slap, except that the reaction needs to be bigger than a simple turn of the head. Ask the students why there should be that kind of difference: because the punch is stronger than a slap.

Foot stomp กระทืบเท้า
This move is so basic that it should be taught with something else just to give the students enough new things to be worth the practice time. The only reason why it should not be used to start the stage fighting lessons is that it's so simple that it cannot be used for teaching the components of a good move. P2 extends one foot slightly. P1 stomps his foot down just slightly downstage of P2's extended foot, creating the main sound effect of the move. P2 should then start hopping up and down on non-extended foot while making sounds of pain and holding the "stomped" foot.

Other possible moves
Head butt ใช้หัวตีหัว- P1 hits P2 in the head using their own head
Block & knee ป้องกันการตีแล้วตีเข่า - P1 tries to punch P2, but P2 blocks. Then P2 hits P1 in the stomach with their knee
Back punch/slap ตีหลัง - After P2 hits P1 in the stomach and P1 is bent over, P2 punches or slaps P1 on the back. P1 falls on the floor.

Wrap Up

Give the students 5 minutes to make up their own 2-person fight plan, using all of the moves you’ve taught them. Close up the session by allowing the pairs to present their routines to everyone in the session.