Kung Fu Panties back in fighting form
Fresh-faced cast gets physical as bad-ass martial arts comedy returns
By Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald February 8, 2013
http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/7939908.bin
Photo courtesy Kung Fu Panties Jade Benoit, Rebecca Northan, Chantelle Han and Sarah Koury are part of the remount of Northan’s’ popular Kung Fu Panties at Loose Moose.
They might look like fight scenes to you and me, but to Adrian Young, they’re a kind of dialogue, spoken in the language of stage combat.
Young’s the fight co-ordinator of Kung Fu Panties, the Tarantino-esque chick flick martial arts comedy that’s making a return visit to Calgary.
Young teamed up with the show’s creator, Rebecca (Blind Date) Northan, to help train a new cast of fresh-faced cast members (ages 17 to 29) who have replaced the original cast.
Kung Fu Panties isn’t exactly dialogue-driven, but if you count the show’s multiple fight scenes as language, it’s positively Shakespearean.
“I’m not here to choreograph fights,” says Young. “I’m here to write you dialogue — it’s physical dialogue.”
It’s physical dialogue that is a blend of martial arts manoeuvres (kung fu, karate, jujitsu, aikido, katana), and military tactical gun work, all of it set against a backdrop of comic book style villainy, in a show that was so popular during its initial 2011 run that the posters got stolen off light poles and scalpers sold marked-up tickets on Kijiji.
There have always been action movies. Kung Fu Panties is an action play.
“They (the fight scenes) are well-involved, elaborate and span the entirety of the show,” says Young. “We tell the story through the fights.”
For Northan, who has spent large chunks of the past two years touring Blind Date around Canada and the U.S., the 2013 edition of Kung Fu Panties is the next step in what she hopes will be the show’s ultimate evolution.
“The long version of the story is the guy who produces Blind Date out of New York, Kevin McCullum (who also produced Avenue Q and others), I sent him the script and he said, I love it. Can you make it a musical?
“And I was like, ‘Oh my, God,’” adds Northan, “I guess so.
“Then,” she says, continuing, “I started thinking about it and I thought, I am so intimidated by that idea right now.”
Wanting to revise the script, Northan returned from her Blind Date tour to her Loose Moose roots, enlisting a group of young emerging actors she worked with this summer at Shakespeare in the Park as well as some Loose Moose improvisers, to workshop the script.
There were a couple of catches: one, Northan had to finance the thing herself, using her Blind Date earnings.
Two was those Tarantino-sized fight scenes.
“The one thing I knew from having done it with Ground Zero (and Hit & Myth) before,” she says, “is that the fights take a really long time (to choreograph).
“So I went to Adrian, our fight director and said, ‘Look, I’m thinking of self-producing the show ... but we don’t have (any) budget.’”
Young agreed to an unconventional six-month rehearsal period, where the cast would meet most Saturdays at his dojo (martial arts studio) to learn the extensive fight choreography required to perform Kung Fu Panties.
Additionally, whenever she was in town, Northan would conduct improv workshops with the cast, which led to her re-styling the script to fit the new cast, which includes such Loose Moose mainstays as Andrew Phung, who plays arch-villain Alberto Flores.
“He’s totally hilarious,” says Northan, who is also directing this edition, “So I just said in places, ‘Why don’t you improvise a bit? Let’s see what comes out.’
“He’s a great improviser, so (some) great stuff came out,” she adds. “I just said keep that. I like it. It’s more comfortable for you, it fits more in your rhythm — (and) I’m not super precious about lines.”
For the cast, many of them students or recent grads from theatre programs at Mount Royal University, the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge, Kung Fu Panties represents a rare opportunity to learn by doing, from one of the city’s most successful artists.
“I’m learning just how hard it is,” says Jamie Matchullis, who plays Goodbody, “to do all the fights and do all the acting on top of that.
“I’m really appreciating the investment that Rebecca and Adrian have put into every single one of us — the fight workshops for four months ahead of this, and Rebecca, she’s interested in our input into the show, and constantly pushing us and challenging us to go the extra mile — whatever our (theatrical) background ... we’re all being pushed out of our comfort zone and I think it’s great.”
And that doesn’t simply stop at the parts they’re getting the opportunity to play. The cast of Kung Fu Panties also get a first-hand tutorial in life in the theatre for another dynamic Calgary woman.
Along with two other Calgary dynamos, Onalea Gilbertson (Blanche: The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie Dame) and Melanie Jones (Endure!), Northan has created and performed shows that they have had produced across the continent, including off-Broadway in New York.
That might be the best developmental workshop those young actors can get.
Quite a contrast from a Canadian theatre culture that — by economic necessity — tends to spend as much time working on the next grant application as it does on the next script.
“I don’t want to wait (for a grant),” Northan says. “I don’t want to have to ask permission (from anybody to produce my work).
“If you’re passionate about it, and think you’ve got a good idea, then scrape a hundred bucks together and beg, borrow and steal — and get it going.
“Because,” she adds, “if you’re not willing to commit to your ideas, then why should anybody else?”
PREVIEW: Kung Fu Panties
at Loose Moose through March 9
Tickets & Info: loosemoose.com or 403-265-5682
shunt@calgaryherald.com
