Focal Press Actors on Guard: Training, Rehearsal and Performance Techniques with the Rapier and Dagger for the Stage and Screen

This second edition of Actors on Guard from Focal Press comprehensively covers the current practices in learning, rehearsing, and performing safe and dynamic swordfights with the single rapier and the rapier and dagger for both stage and screen.

Focusing specifically on the Elizabethan rapier and dagger, which are the most popular weapons used in stage fights, the book provides actors, directors, teachers, stage managers, and technicians the skills and knowledge essential to presenting safe and effective swordfights. The book takes the reader through the complex process of selecting safe stage weapons, learning the basic handling and management of the rapier and dagger, and safely moving and interact in the potentially dangerous process of learning, rehearsing, and performing choreographed swordplay. This second edition has been revised with current industry practices and features hundreds of step-by-step practical exercises in the care and handling of prop swords, footwork, guards, parries, cutting and thrusting techniques, blade taking actions, disarms, wounds, and kills using the rapier and dagger.

The book also includes access to a wealth of online resources, with additional information that expands upon specific mechanics, techniques, and concepts covered in the text as well as video demonstrations of solo and partnered techniques and exercises.

Author Dale Anthony Girard is an award-winning fight director, choreographer, and stunt coordinator. A third-degree black belt in Taekwondo/Hopkido and Haidong-Gumdo, he is a Fight Master with the Society for American Fight Directors (SAFD), a SAG-AFTRA stunt coordinator and stunt performer, and founding member of the North Carolina Stuntmen's Association (NCSA). Mr. Girard spent five years on the faculty at the National Theatre Conservatory and has been the resident Fight Director for Yale's prestigious School of Drama and School of Music's Opera Program. He is currently the Director of Stage Combat Studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.