Choose your weapon and get ready for a fight in the first show of this season’s Live Five lineup.
Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline runs at The Refinery this November, and brings a mix of drama and steel to the Live Five season.
Performer, fight director and co-producer Jordie Richardson spoke to PodSask ahead of the show – and here are five need-to-knows about the production:
- Debut — This is the first ever production by the new Saskatoon theatre group called The Eisenschmetterlinge Collective. German for “iron butterfly,” Richardson said the new collective hoped to showcase the stage combat prowess among Saskatoon performers while taking on exciting fight-focused performances.
“I would love for the audience to appreciate what we’ve got here, and understand that there’s so much more we can put on stage with stage combat,” Richardson said. - Weaponry — The idea of “stage combat” for most theatre-goers probably involves some fisticuffs or some slick rapier-duel swordplay. As Richardson puts it, Zastrozzi will have so much more than fists and fencing.
According to Richardson, there will be a multitude of weapons on display during the show. Swords, quarterstaffs, whips, axes, knives — almost every kind of weapon conceivable will be wielded during the course of the production. - Storytelling — But what good is all of the fighting without plot?
Zastrozzi is a play by George F. Walker about revenge, murder, and the lengths one will go to in order to get what they want. The story follows the titular Zastrozzi, master criminal of Europe, as he seeks to avenge the murder of his mother at the hands of the inconstant, God-fearing Verezzi.
“It’s almost 50 years old and it’s a Canadian theatre classic,” Richardson said. “We knew we wanted to do a fight-centric show… but the problem with a lot of shows written to facilitate fights is there’s not a lot of crunch, if you will, for the actors. This show is not that. People are often fighting as much with their words as with their weapons.”
Richardson noted there were surprising moments of humour scattered throughout the show despite the serious nature of the main plot line. - Adaptation — Walker’s nearly-50-year-old play is, itself, an adaptation of a novel of the same name.
Written by the renowned English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, the original novel was written when Shelley was only 17 and first published in 1810.
The play follows the plot of the original Zastrozzi quite closely. Richardson noted that the company made small adaptations to how they interpreted the material in consideration of modern sensibilities to take care of both actors and audience members alike, but the spirit of the show remains the same. - Choreography — Richardson, who has certification from the national body Fight Directors Canada, said it was exciting to plan out all the combat in this show.
It has been a fun challenge creating all the fights in the show, and Richardson said the final fight is a “massive spectacle” the likes of which has rarely been seen on a Saskatoon stage.
But these fights aren’t just spectacle — they’re part of the storytelling process for a company making its first foray into producing its own shows.
“It’s not just about getting the choreo down. It’s also about what kind of story are you telling in the midst of the fight, and what kind of effects are these fights having?” Richardson said.
Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline runs from Nov. 7 to 17 at select dates and times at The Refinery. Tickets can be found at livefive.ca.
