Re: [Middlebridge] event/demo

On Sat, 10 Jun 1995 BRgarwood@aol.com wrote:

> This brings up a point I'd like discussed by fighters, demo-crats, and the
> general populace. My idea of fighting at at demo is to give thr crowd a good
> show. Get in there with lots of noise and action, and don't die too soon.
> Some fighter's I've mentioned this to say "But that wouldn't be showing what
> we do" and fight as if at a tourney, waiting for openings, and takng
> whatever sounds good. (walk around, stare at each other, throw a couple
> feints, and BANG you're dead). We have a demo coming up at an arts in the
> pak festival in a couple weeks. What is the general feeling on both sides of
> this?
>
> Berwyn

In a couple of demos that we have done most recently here in Castel
Rouge, it was decided to actually run a small single elimination tourney
to show the spectators what our "sport" is really like. After that we
did a little bit of melee fighting. It was a real crowd-pleaser! Even
when we were killed rather quickly, the crowd was impressed. (Really
hamming up the 'dying' didn't hurt, either!) We fought the tourney
pretty much as we would a 'real' tourney and it still put on a good
show. Of course, between bouts, we had one of members explaining to the
audience what we were doing, how we are trained, don't try this at home,
etc.

One thing that we did to give the kids something neat to do, (my lord
Berwyn should remember this) was let them pick up a sword and take a
couple of swings at a fighter on his knees. Call it "Whap-a-Fighter" if
you will, it was still a lot of fun, even for us fighters, who got to do
a lot of dying for the kids!

So I guess my point is, if you are going to do a fighting demo, do a
small tourney properly to show the audience what it is really like and
then you can ham it up as much as you want afterwards. We managed to
keep our audience enthralled for the entire time we were playing,
including the dancing we did after the fighting ended!

Robin Kyrke
Barony of Castel Rouge
 
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From: Gregory Young <Greg_Young@MBnet.MB.CA>
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Received on Sat Jun 10 13:07:05 1995