Chicago Theatrical Ensemble: Babes with Blades

Steel blades ring as Sam Alden deflects an incoming attack and spins a four-pound broadsword into a cut at the adversary. After a few quick exchanges, Alden's blade finds an opening and strikes a blow to the enemy's head. The soldier crumples lifelessly to the ground.�

Fortunately, this fight was not a life-and-death struggle but rather a carefully choreographed sequence for a play in production. Though Alden is an internationally respected theatrical violence designer, don't call Sam a swordsman: Dawn "Sam" Alden is the woman who founded the Chicago theatrical ensemble Babes With Blades.�

Stage combat is the art of illusory violence for stage and film, and though there are notable female exceptions, it is a field historically dominated by male choreographers and performers. In response, Alden created the first Babes With Blades show, an evening of stage combat written, directed, choreographed, and performed entirely by women. The performance was a smash hit, sponsoring five more similar productions, Babes With Blades has even been seen in Scotland, at the invitation-only Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The shows were so successful that the women have founded their own theatre company, regularly producing new works and sponsoring playwrights to pen pieces that involve women fighting.�

The unifying dramatic theme of their shows changes with each production, but one goal remains the same: to give female combatants the chance to display the fighting and choreographic skills neglected by women's roles in the theatrical canon. The self-styled Babes don't see their work as a "justification" for women learning stage combat: rather, they feel the burden of justification lies with the theatre world to explain why the centuries-old martial traditions of women have been almost completely ignored.�

Female practitioners of stage combat must often do battle with more than just their theatrical opponents. A fighting-as-boy's-club mentality pervades the theatre as it does American society at large.�