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Even off-hours are devoted to the body. \u201cI\u2019m in pigeon pose watching \u2018The Pitt\u2019 tonight,\u201d Anyanwu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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There are no shortcuts in MMA training, points out former UFC fighter Sijara \u201cSarj\u201d Eubanks, both the show\u2019s MMA consultant and an inspiration for the script. Anyanwu interviewed her as part of her writing process for the show\u2019s world premiere four months ago at Two River Theater in New Jersey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When people ask Eubanks how to prepare for MMA, she says, gnomically, \u201cFighting is the best cardio for fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guiding the leads, understudies, choreographer Adesola Osakalumi and me through a warm-up, Eubanks summoned the spoken-word rhythm of a coach and the world-historical voice of a movie trailer narrator: \u201cIt\u2019s about explosions. It\u2019s about tempo. It\u2019s about flow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we hoisted legs in the air, initiating kicks from the knee, she told us to envision how \u201ca cobra snaps.\u201d Then she bade us to do a kind of splits, but resting on the knees instead of the feet. My tendons and ligaments whinnied in moral outrage. I sent a pleading, panicked glance to Osakalumi. \u201cGood morning!\u201d he replied knowingly.<\/p>\n
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Theater critic Lily Janiak warms up with \u201cThe Monsters\u201d cast members.<\/p>\n
Jessica Christian\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Eubanks, who retired from professional fighting in 2023, sees herself as a budding fight director now. \u201cThe MMA-to-theater pipeline isn’t something you hear about too often, but I’m happy to be pioneering it, I guess,\u201d she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
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The Springfield, Mass., native initially got into fighting as a way to get fit as a student at Morgan State University in Baltimore. \u201cIt’s the coolest feeling in the world,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be your most animalistic self. You\u2019ve got to really have no stops for 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
To give stage actors a crash course in her art form, Eubanks focused on the basics: breaking falls, maintaining a staggered stance, being so light on the feet that \u201cyou should be able to slide a Post-It under the heels.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk a lot about level changes,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou’re standing tall for striking, and then you disappear to become shorter for grappling. The transition between those will definitely set your quads on fire.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a fighter, she memorized countless codes \u2014 numbers one through six stood for jabs, hooks and uppercuts, one number for each hand. Now she and Osakalumi use them, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Mixed martial arts fighter Sijara Eubanks warms up with fellow Berkeley Repertory\u00a0Theatre artists for \u201cThe Monsters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jessica Christian\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the notes. Now that you know the notes, you can build whatever \u2014 compose your music,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
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Anyanwu, whose brother Azunna Anyanwu was also a pro MMA fighter, interviewed Eubanks to learn more about the experience of fighting professionally as a Black woman. One key takeaway, she recalled, is \u201cShe loves this thing that has not always loved her back.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the script, Anyanwu describes both Big, who begins the show a pro fighter, and Lil, a newcomer, as \u201cstrong, but not that tough.\u201d Before rehearsal, she explained that the siblings share \u201cthe capacity to withstand.\u201d At the same time, she added, they both put up a wall \u201cso that something doesn’t get through, because actually, the thing that gets through could take them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
In rehearsal, Eubanks and Osakalumi were choreographing a sequence where Anyanwu\u2019s Lil tries to get Jones\u2019 much taller Big to fight her back. Anyanwu charged at Jones\u2019 torso and threw a smattering of punches at his head. Eventually, the way Jones restrained her from fighting almost looked like he was holding her in his lap for comfort \u2014 a canny physicalization of the way, with family, one lashes out to seek succor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Playwright and performer Ngozi Anyanwu warms up with fellow cast members during rehearsal for \u201cThe Monsters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jessica Christian\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Jones sees his character as pursuing MMA because \u201che understands that he is legible in this medium.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Big\u2019s motivation, Jones said, is \u201cI make sense to people as doing this. I become something that people go, \u2018Yeah! Attaboy! Get him!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In fighting, he continued, \u201cIt’s a level playing field. It doesn’t matter if you were born in the ivory tower. So there’s some of that, too \u2014 of becoming the person I want to become, a kind of self-shaping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyanwu said Lil initially gets interested in fighting for the wrong reasons. But then, \u201cShe wins, and I don’t think she has won before\u201d \u2014 in anything in life.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s learning her capacity as she goes,\u201d she said, \u201cand she does not want to be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playwright and performer Ngozi Anyanwu, top, and performer Sullivan Jones work through a fight scene during a rehearsal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[5534,49,3335,48,172128,641,638,82,18916],"class_list":["post-555737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-east-bay","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}