Published: October 18, 2007 08:39 pm      

EDUCATION: Lew-Port students act combative

NU instructor leads acting workshop at high school

In the world of stage combat, nothing is taken for granted.

In instructing theater students Thursday at Lewiston-Porter High School, Niagara University artist-in-residence Steve Vaughan emphasized the importance of details in staging a fall.

The legs need to be spread apart with the right foot facing the front, he said. Left knee pointing outward, the person catching their partner needs to maintain their center while forming a triangle with their legs.

The person who’s falling, meanwhile, has to resist the most basic instinct.

“Be stiff,” he said, telling students not to help their partner catch them or raise them back up. “Are boards afraid of falling? Be a board.”

This type of instruction is welcome at Lew-Port, which has opened its doors to NU this year in an effort to enhance its arts instruction. Theater teacher Frank Scelsa gives credit to principal Paul Casseri for working to offer more options and for allowing students to miss nearly a half-day Thursday for the first part of this two-day workshop.

“He wants to see a better balance between sports and the arts,” Scelsa said of Casseri.

The principal sees it as a natural merger.

“NU has such a strong drama department, as do we,” Casseri said.

Vaughan is more than happy to help out. He periodically travels to area high schools to supplement their theater instruction and has worked of late in improving relations between his university and its nearest scholastic neighbor.

Vaughan will be at Lew-Port again Tuesday to finish the workshop, which will feature the students staging short combat scenes. NU teachers then plan to conduct a stage make-up clinic at Lew-Port later this month, with both sides coming together later this school year for an actor’s studio-type session where high school students can hear from NU alumni who have enjoyed acting success.

Both sides see the union as a good thing. Scelsa hopes to see his students gain confidence on stage and interest in the craft of acting. Vaughan, meanwhile, appreciates those who enjoy acting and hopes to inspire another generation of future thespians.

“It’s a much better trained theater audience,” Vaughan said of the Lew-Port students, some of whom recently came to a production of “Our Town” at NU. “I want people to understand how theater works, how much work goes into it.”

He worked toward that end Thursday, calling stage combat a performance-based martial art for the concentration that’s needed. He urged his students to remember that the audience cares about nothing except for what they see.

“It is show business,” he said, emphasizing the last word of his sentence. “The thing you make has to be good enough for people to pay to come and watch.”