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He ended up taking the job, describing the experience as a trial by fire. “So I was like, ‘You mean I’m not answering to anybody and I’m doing all the choreography and these are the two biggest, combat-heavy shows in Shakespeare’s cannon?!’” “I had only ever been someone’s assistant,” Merckx recalls. Thinking Merckx had choreographed the combat demos himself, the casting director offered him the position of head fight choreographer for both productions. As the phone call went on, disappointment turned into bewilderment and, finally, excitement. When the casting director called, however, he was offered only a few bit parts. His background made him a perfect fit and he sent in a demo reel that included scenes of himself showing o‑ several combat styles. Fresh out of grad school and living in San Francisco, he saw that the Oklahoma Shakespeare Festival was putting on Romeo and Juliet and Henry IV, Part 1, productions that featured a lot of fight scenes. Merckx’s first big break was serendipitous. However, the understanding of movement composition and physical form he developed in those classes never left him and would later prove crucial to creating fight scenes that let command and finesse coexist with chaos and violence. “I quickly learned that I was no dancer,” he says, laughing. While still at Washington University, Merckx took several dance classes.
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He was a fast learner and when his instructors travelled to perform in Shakespeare festivals across the country, they would often ask Merckx perform (and fight) alongside them. During these formative years he took every opportunity to sharpen his skills, signing up for any stage combat class that was offered. He pursued theater at Washington University before heading out to the University of Illinois to earn his MFA in acting. He was only nine, but the seed was planted and he’s been acting ever since. Merckx grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, home to just 35,000 people where he began his acting career in community theater, playing one of Fagin’s pickpockets in Oliver Twist. On the stage of A Noise Within the task of crafting these illusions of violence falls to their resident fight choreographer, Ken Merckx. As chaotic and frenetic as they may appear, every swipe, stab and slash was likely crafted with precision and practiced ad nauseam for months, well before opening night. It is in these scenes that we see each character at their most exposed and glimpse, in an instant, who they truly are. Romeo draws his sword against Tybalt, the Jets and the Sharks square off beneath an overpass, Stanley strikes Stella across the cheek in a drunken rage. In fact, it seems impossible to talk about humans without telling stories about violence. A Noise Within fight choreographer Ken Merckx tells stories with the vocabulary of physical violence.įrom the tales of Greek mythology to the latest Marvel blockbuster, our stories have always been fraught with brutality and conflict.