Fight Club

So the last two days Owain and I hosted Fight Club in our backyard.  Twenty kids, one combat for stage instructor and hours of enthusiastic and mostly successfully fake punching, slapping, hair pulling, eye gouging, uppercuts and strangulation.  The enthusiasm with which a seven-year-old will pretend to scream in pain and expire is almost disturbing.  It was about the most fun I have had in Cambridge.  I like that transgressive, dark stuff.  In my defense,  Fight Club requires body awareness, cooperation, choreography, intention and commitment.  It is an introduction to theater and it was totally fun.  In the last 45 minutes, we put together a short play based on the scene in The Hobbit where the dwarves attack the Goblin King.  In our version, an elf prince killed the Goblin King and the elves were assisting the hobbits to free a hobbit hostage/future roast hobbit dinner held by the Goblin King.  The elves took out the trolls guarding the goblin lair and the hobbits attacked the goblins.  (There were two girls out of twenty and when faced with their options, whether to be a goblin, hobbit, elf or troll, they wanted to know who was the prettiest.  That was a little depressing.)