ASHLAND, Ore. — There are eleven plays this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. An actor typically performs in one, maybe two, shows per season. A director usually only directs one, but there is someone at OSF that has a hand in every show.
For 24 year, Jon Toppo has roamed the many stages of OSF. He came in as an actor, and while he still performs, there’s another title next to his name in the playbill.
“Always an actor first and then I had a facility, or so it seems, they think,” Toppo said. “I keep fooling them, for stage combat and fight direction.”
Toppo is the fight director for all eleven shows this season.
“The man is truly a gem because he is just so incredibly knowledgeable, not only about the technical skills,” actor Barzin Akhavan said. “He really is more concerned about the storytelling aspect of the fight.”
It wasn’t the storytelling that initially pulled Toppo in to stage combat, though.
“In high school it was just cool. It was cool to have swords,” Toppo said. “It was cool to learn how to fight, but now it’s all about telling the story.”
Toppo and Akhavan agreed that movement can guide the story along.
“Movement is just another form of communication that we have, and it can tell us so much,” Akhavan said.
“It’s also to forward the story in a way that language can’t, and I think that’s why we have violence in plays,” Toppo said. “All of a sudden, language would no longer do so we move to violence.”
Movement on stage is so much more than violence or fighting. There’s dance, like in “Guys and Dolls,” choreographed by Daniel Pelzig in his first season at OSF.
“I believe really good choreography always furthers the story,” Pelzig said. “I think the importance of dance in theater is to find a way to tell a story that text and lyric can’t only do.”
“I certainly think that the movement helps me as an actor, draw me into the story because I’m not thinking as much about the words, but suddenly I’m doing a dance and it’s like I’m in another realm,” actor Jennie Greenberry said.
“I think that’s something that OSF just wants to pride itself on, that we’re not trying to tell a story in just one manner,” Akhavan said.
For the performers, the expectations but artistically and physically are high.
“On a show like Guys and Dolls, the physical demands are enormous,” Pelzig said. “It’s a huge dance show certainly by OSF standards.”
“They have to be athletes,” Toppo said. “All the actors that perform in those fights have to be athletes.”
Pelzig, as well as Toppo, are coaches, bringing decades of experience, a passion for storytelling and exciting moves. Toppo has been doing this for a while, but he said at the end of every season, he takes a moment to says, “Wow, we did a lot.”
