David Woolley

3315 W. Sunnyside #2B
Chicago, IL 60625
312 560-5448
dwoolley@popmail.colum.edu
smen@interaccess.com
www.theswordsmen.com

Fight Master

Member since: 1983

Woolley is a free-lance actor/fight director/ stage combat instructor based in Chicago for the past 25 years. He is Artist in Residence at Columbia College of Chicago, and performs as Guido in Dirk and Guido: the Swordsmen!. Woolley has staged violence for over 300 productions in Chicago and is the recipient of the Joseph Jefferson Award for Consistent Excellence in Stage Combat Choreography and the Off-Loop Theatre Award for Best Fight Direction. He has staged for all the major theatres in Chicago (Goodman, Shakespeare Repertory, Court, Steppenwolf, Lyric Opera, Royal George, Candlelight, Drury Lane(s), Victory Gardens, National Jewish, Next, Body Politic ) and many of the off-Loop (About Face, Raven, Strawdog, Pegasus, Stormfeld, Interplay). Regionally he has worked the Guthrie ( Minneapolis ), the Purple Rose ( Chelsea , Mich. ) and off-Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse.He has taught at University of Texas (Austin), DePaul, Brandeiss, Purdue, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Roosevelt Universities , and has been Artist in Residence at Columbia College Chicago since 1985.

His first staging was with the Jeff-Award Winning Class Enemy at the Next Theatre; and the World and New York premieres of David Mamet's Edmond in 1982. Favorite past stagings include: Moose Productions' Dungeonmaster (107 episodes with Bruce A. Young directing), Shakespeare Rep's Macbeth, Cymbeline, and Antony and Cleopoatra (with Young as a team), Court Theatre's Fuente Ovehuna, Lifeline Theatre's Purloined Poe, and staging and performing in the film "The Royal Rascal" for Drury Lane Oakbrook's Singing in the Rain. His work on film can be seen in John MacNaughton's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." He most recently staged fights for Massacre for Teatro Vista at the Goodman Theater, Panic and Final Curtain at the Riverpoint Center in Owensboro, Ky (In the First Annual Murder Mystery Play Festival). He taught Broadsword for the Actor Combatant Workshop and Master classes for teachers-in-training at the National Stage Combat Workshop at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

As an Artist in Residence at Columbia College of Chicago, he is now in his 22nd year teaching stage combat for the actor (levels 1-4, all eight SAFD weaponswhich ) and overseeing violence for their season of plays, this year includes Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story (and 36 directing projects plus scene study and faculty workshops).

He sponsors the bi-annual Sword and the Pen playwrighting competiton (for the Babes With Blades) and will direct the winning play, Los Desaparacidos, or the Vanished at the Raven in the Spring of 2008. He most recently directed and choreographed the Babes With Blades' Affair of Honor: Satisfaction at the Viaduct Theater. He co-directed the eighth season of The Bold and Stupid Men for performances at Renaissance Faires in California. And, he is finishing his 18th season performing as Guido Crescendo in Dirk and Guido: the Swordsmen.

For more info on David Woolley go to www.theswordsmen.com.