From the American Theater
March 1999

Arms and the Babe: "Babes With Blades" Brings Out The Inherent Badass In Every Actress
by Justin Hayford

(The full text of the article appears below the picture.)

Susan Foley hasn’t drawn breath in a good ten minutes. She’s stiffer than an Edwardian collar. In her right hand she holds a gargantuan sword. It’s the first time she’s attempted to wield this monstrosity, and you might think she was holding a hungry anaconda. To make matters worse, her partner, experienced swordswoman Marcy Konlon, is trying to get Foley to take a serious stab at her.

"Where is your target?" Konlon asks for the tenth time, then illustrates on her own body. "Here, here, here: mid-thigh, mid-upper-arm, six inches above the head. Thrust again."

Foley laughs nervously and lunges forward a few times. She’s no threat, but Konlon parries her thrusts anyway. "Be careful about flinging your blade around too much," Konlon admonishes. "You’d be amazed what you can hit. Lighting instruments, audience members .... "

Foley shrinks. "Okay, wait, now I’m completely anxious."

You’d never know it, but these women are rehearsing a scene from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Remember Gwendolen and Cecily, both engaged to Ernest Worthington, dallying about in the garden and politely hating each other? Well, this time around, they’re armed. It’s one of a dozen scenes in Babes With Blades, an evening of all-female stage combat produced by Chicago’s Footsteps Theatre Company.

From the back row of Footsteps’s compact studio theatre, Dawn Alden, the show’s creator, calls out to Foley. "Hold the sword with just your thumb and forefinger. The other three are only there for finesse." Foley nods, then stares at her hand in complete paralysis.

"When you get really good," Konlon says encouragingly, "you get to do this—." She whips the sword through the air at lightning speed, producing a whish! that is pure Hollywood. Foley’s eyes light up.

The two go at it again. In six weeks Foley will have to slice up her opponent in corset and lace gloves ("Detestable girl—" jab! "—but I require tea—" whack!). When she reaches the line about rescuing Ernest "with a firm hand," she’ll punch Konlon hard in the face. The plan then is for the duel to degenerate into hair pulling.

For now, Foley is simply trying to hold her ground. After a few minutes of tentative stabs she’s backed herself into the corner. Konlon comes to the rescue with reassuring words: "When large metal objects are winging toward your head, you’re going to have a tendency to step back."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t ever apologize, darlin’. Unless I’m bleeding."

Babes With Blades, like so many feminist endeavors, grew out of talent and frustration. Footsteps put themselves on Chicago’s storefront theatre map several years ago when they began producing all-female Shakespeare. Alden, a company member certified in stage combat, loved being in those shows. "They were some of the only outlets in town for women who had combat experience to use it on stage, because we were playing men’s roles," she explains. After every production she found herself lamenting with other women who had impressive stage combat training but no place to play.

So she threw together Babes With Blades in May 1997. It was originally planned as a four-day showcase. "I invited all the artistic directors and casting agents I could get my hands on," she says. "We were out to prove a point. ‘Here are all these women with all this incredible training. For crying out loud, use them.'"

The show sold out almost immediately. And ran for 10 weeks.

Babes has had two other ten-week runs since then, each time with new scenes and new skirmishes. Last summer the gals produced a full evening of professional wrestling, an attempt to raise money for their trip to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

Once there, they performed their show for 23 straight days, the exhaustion and the injuries increasing as the weeks went by.

In the past, Babes consisted of original vignettes and spoofs: women’s prison movies, ancient warrior myths, horror flicks, even a Xena sendup. This time out they’re starting with scenes from published plays and novels—The Trojan Women, Robin Hood, Waiting for Godot, The Miracle Worker (the food fight, of course)—and excavating the violence inherent in them. "It’s all about power plays," Alden says. "It’s about ripping out the subtext kicking and screaming and putting it up physically."

Despite Alden’s interest in consciousness-raising and female empowerment, she knows that some of her audience come expecting something else. "I would certainly say that we sell a few tickets because people are coming to see boobs and bush," she says. "And of course the name of the show pokes fun at the titillation our culture will always see in such a production. But if people come in with that impression, they don’t leave with it."

If you want to see fire burn in an actress’s eyes, ask a babe why she joined Alden’s cast. "There’s no bullshitting the sense of truth when you’re in a fight," says Babes veteran Tere Parkes, slashing the air with her hands as though flourishing rapiers. "Because it’s dangerous. You can’t play at stuff when you’re in a fight. If you’re not throwing chairs at each other, you can be halfway there, and it’ll be perfectly acceptable. The audience will say, ‘Oh, that was so pretty, they said all their lines nicely.’ When you’re fighting, you’ve got to be home."

"As an actor it is an amazing tool to focus myself on stage," says Alden. "It requires incredible physical precision that cannot be interrupted by acting. Yet at the same time, acting sells the fight. It’s a beautiful razor’s edge to walk."

For all the women, Babes provides the rare opportunity to test the full range of their skills. "The most we usually get to use is the slap," says performer Michelle DiMaso. "Or pulling hair. Or falling down stairs, preferably with clothes falling off. Or, of course, the rape scene. We usually end up as the objects of violence."

Under Alden’s maternal guidance, however, they are allowed to take charge—and take over. "I’ve been a big woman my entire life," says cast member Vicky James. "And I have always tried to take up less space than I actually take up. But when I joined the show, in fact when I took my first stage combat class, I finally got to take that space back. I love being in a group of women who say, ‘I’ve got ovaries the size of cantaloupes!’"

"Stage combat taught me that this body I’m inhabiting is a positive thing," Alden says, "a potent weapon, an extremely skilled creature that benefits me. For women, acting training—and life training—teach us to be disconnected from our bodies. Stage combat has put me back into myself. Even though I’m not what you see on a Mademoiselle cover, and never will be, I love what I am. I feel strong in it, and I want to show it off. It awakens the innate badass in every woman."

As her first dueling rehearsal ends, Foley is thrusting, cutting and parrying with remarkable ease. "Always think about how pretty the line is," Konlon says as she adjusts Foley’s arm. "This has to be a lady-like fight."

An hour ago Foley’s sword whacked her opponent’s with a graceless clunk. Now it ricochets off with a spritely ping! Foley stops a moment, gazes into the air and laughs. "I see entirely new vistas opening before me!"

Justin Hayford is a regular contributor to the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune. He is also an adjunct lecturer in political science at Northwestern University.