In swordplay classes, Columbia College students learn to fight with skill and die with style

There's a right way to die and a wrong way to die.

For David Woolley, namby-pamby flopping to the ground without so much as a groan is decidedly not the way to go. He wants to see a long, slow release of breath accompanied by shivering, writhing and some semblance of the-too-disgusting-to-mention-here bodily functions that accompany the last stages of a violent demise.

"Now, take your partner and kill them!" the Columbia College Chicago stage combat professor urges his charges.

In response, two dozen or so eager trainees raise their swords. Blades clash, glinting in the late-morning sun accompanied by cries of imagined agony. There's stumbling, falling. Hands press against fatal wounds.

Few things delight a Western audience quite like a fight to the death — from the dueling in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to the two-bladed decapitation in Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II."

And few likely know as much about the art of faux fighting as Woolley, who has practiced and taught swordplay for almost four decades. When he's not instructing at Columbia College, he travels — armed with swords and daggers — to Renaissance fairs across the country.

He's coached stage combat at most of the major theaters in Chicago and his students have gone on to do everything from professional wrestling to stunt work for TV shows that include "Chicago Fire" and "The Bear."

Woolley — solidly built with a grizzled jaw and his silver hair slicked back in a ponytail — surely has one of the most macabre libraries in the city, with titles such as, "On Killing," "The Complete Book of Knife Fighting" and "The Duel" in his poky office on the third floor of the Getz Theatre Center downtown. In the time before Google, he'd travel the country photocopying Renaissance manuals on the art of personal combat.

He takes what he does very seriously, because when the weapons come out, it means that — on stage, in film and sometimes in life — there's nothing left to say.

"Act Five, scene three — in many Shakespeare plays — is where the fight happens," Woolley said. "We have made it to this point in the play. Somebody is going to fight, and somebody is going to die."

And if you don't do it right, the audience won't buy it — or worse, someone could get hurt. But Woolley said the worst injury he could recall in one of his classes was a separated shoulder, when someone took a tumble. As for his own 65-year-old body?

"Mostly wear and tear," he said, adding that he starts each day with an hour or so of yoga.

Last week, Woolley was teaching an introductory rapier-and-dagger class to a group of a dozen or so mostly young women.

"You all, we're going to go really slowly — one phrase at a time," Woolley said, by which he meant a pause to punctuate every thrust, cut and parry.

He told them to keep their shoulders square, as though this were a camera shot in a movie.

In a death scene, the sword comes in at an angle, lightly touching the waist of the victim, who, doubled over, then helps in her own demise — with a hand over the tip of the blade and discreetly pulling it to her belly.

Then, with a sleight-of-hand, the combatants work together to make it look as though the victor is driving the blade in deeper.

"You want to run it up under the ribs and up into the heart and lungs!" Woolley bellows to his students, trying to be heard over the groans and clanging of swords.

But there's more.

"Once you pull it out, there is elation, followed closely by nausea — followed by bad dreams and PTSD," Woolley tells his students.

Those students see the combat classes as a way of adding another tool to their box.

"It's really good on a (acting) resume if you already know how to do combat," says Emma Green, a Columbia theater student who has been studying sword play for about a year and a half. "Then, they don't have to teach you."

Woolley started teaching a single combat class at Columbia back in 1985. Now, Columbia offers between six and nine each semester.

“In competing with film and satisfying our audience’s bloodlust for violence that they could believe, we had to get better at doing the physical actions of violence," he says of the increased number of class offerings since he started teaching.

How does he explain the enduring appeal of a drawn-out sword fight, especially in an age when audiences often expect instant gratification, which they can get with the pull of a trigger?

Guns scare people, he says.

“Swords are swashbuckling and fun. Our hero uses a sword to save the day," Woolley says. "Usually, it’s visually impressive. It catches light. And everyone thinks they can do it, which they probably can — with some practice!"

If they want to learn how it should be done — so that it's believable but also true to the historical traditions of dueling — it's a little easier now because the manuals Woolley spent years photocopying are mostly available online. With a greater access to such materials, stage and film combat has become more authentic, Woolley said.

In his office, Woolley clicked on a video of a team of Czech stunt men he admires. To the untrained eye, they look like superb swordsmen going at each other with a brutal ferocity. But it's still acting. The viewer, by design, has a view of every thrust, cut and parry.

"With stage combat, you're trying to make pictures that will tell the audience the story of what's going on. Creating violent pictures often competes with reality," Woolley says

Ultimately, it's about entertainment. How many viewers will notice if the sword is correct for the time period or if it's being wielded the right way?

"One percent of your viewers will notice that," Woolley says. "Once the swords come out, that's all they see: Shiny! It's a sword! Yay! People love sword fights. Thank God."