In 1995, the Greenville Creative Arts Council did West Side Story. One night, during the rumble, Riff and Bernardo struck knives a little too hard and Bernardo's knife broke. The tip flew to the ground and Baby John captured it under his toe, but now Bernardo was at a loss as to how to kill Riff. Instead of just plunging the knife butt into Riff, he grabbed Riff's hand, turned Riff's knife unto himself, and killed him that way. He then grabbed the knife out of Riff's cold, dead hand and fought Tony. -Jeanna Noel Culp

-This magical little story of violence took place in my final performance at the Langley Fine Arts School, in May of 1997. The LFAS drama majors hold two one-week festivals per school year, with about 25 shows to a festival. Well, "Elegant Lords and Gracious Ladies" was the final show of the final night, and was a rather... intense medievil piece that was heavey on sword play. It was a 6 person cast, which, considering the type of festival that it was in, was a pretty big. Unfortunatley, the cast members had other responcibilities than the play our lead had been in eight other plays that week, and thus was having problems remembering all his lines. He had also just ended a 2 year relationship with his girlfriend, who was also in the cast. She was also the stage manager for several shows. Another cast member was the Designer/operator of all the lighting in the festival. I happened to be Stage Crew mngr/props mngr. for the festival, as well as SMing and directing a play I had writen. And we didn't like each other. After weeks flew by without incident, I had a feeling that a major disaster was building. I was right. In the final scene, I had my dramatic showdown with the villainous lead. We were in all our choreographed, sword-blazing glory, up until the very last move, where the villain knocks my sword away kicks me down with a shot to the chest. This fight was incredibly fast and entertaining, as both I and the lead have worked with swords extensively. Regretfully, the lead was slightly off-angle when knocking my sword away, and I, having to keep the sword from flying into the audience, was forced to fall in a different position. As such, I was not where I should have been, and the lead ended up kicking me (very hard) in the throat instead of the chest. Not only did this leave me gasping for air, but it caused the lead to step on my cloak and loose his balance. And so when one of the girls was supposed to run foward and stab the villain to save my life, the resulting chaos sent the girl into the other cast members my head back to the floor, and our lead crashing overtop of a barstool. It was a good thing that it was the very end of the play, as I was now barely consious, one girl had a twisted ankle, another girl had a sprained wrist, and the lead had broken 4 ribs. Not a bad body count for a high school erfomance, I must say. -Bryn Williams

-Well at the "Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center" we are doing a production of "Hamlet". And if you know anything about Shakespear you know theres lots of fights. Well after the last fight scene where Hamlet dies, Hamlets best freand ( The only charichter that lives) turns over and has red stuff on his face. Well during the rehearsal he never used fake blood, so we all thought this was an opening night prank from the stage goof! Well once I saw the booth shit there pants I knew he was really hurt and jumped down three flights of stairs in five seconds. Well turns out when he nocked down an actors sword it bounced right up and hit his cheek. At that point he blinked, which saved his eye because right at that second the sword poked at his eye. -Casey Prout Stage Hand

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