Ruff Play

On Saturday 29^th  I arrive at Play Fight Wrestling School London, apprehensive, my car boot containing: three sets of bear ears, three sets of dog ears, a box of multi-coloured streamers and six confetti cannons… I was here with a team of professional wrestlers to participate in ‘Ruff Play’: a workshop bringing together academics and combat experts.

Months later, I have joined the BOB team as a Research Fellow. This post is an opportunity to reflect on the events of that day and the processes at play during it, as well as the brief we worked to, how we tackled it,  and what we learned about baiting as a popular entertainment during the early modern period.

For ‘Ruff Play’, Andy Kesson, had asked me to create a performance “as shambolic and rough as we want”, with only one demand: that it absolutely must have bears. Now in the first instance, Andy is talking my language, which is the weird, sometimes wonderful, often anarchic practice of professional wrestling. However, while I have created wrestling performances featuring fairy-tale witches, psychotic grannies, and lions, I had never yet worked with bears… (See fig. 1.)

It was agreed that ‘Ruff Play’ would culminate in a main event inspired by a particular eyewitness account from an archival record that we can’t stop returning to on this project. The document, which read a bit like a surreal early modern trip advisor review, was written by a chap visiting from Pomerania called Lupold von Wedel. His encounter with bears took place in Southwark in August 1584:

Central to all wrestling is storytelling, which plays a crucial role in separating it from “legitimate” combat sports like Mixed Martial Arts and Boxing. So, when I sat down for an initial planning session with wrestlers Rachel Seagroatt and Richard Summers-Calvert, the task was agreeing the story we should tell. Wrestling outcomes are fixed in advance of the fight and therefore matches tell the story of that fight, rather than being an actual sporting contest. This is not to say that wrestling is not violent or dangerous (it is inescapably both), but rather that this is mitigated by skilful collaboration and stagecraft.

My job as a wrestling promotor encompasses many tasks, but storytelling is the most important. I create stories using two processes: booking and promotion. These are two terms that are central to all wrestling companies, but also perhaps early modern bear baiting? Booking means that I choose which wrestlers to employ, place the wrestlers into matches, arrange them to form a show, then  determine who wins and who loses, and how and why they win and lose. The task then becomes promoting the matches and selling tickets to the show. Booking and promotion work together to create stories that will interest the public. The most obvious way this is achieved is by developing characters. Typically, a show has heroes and villains, which are called babyfaces and heels. These characters are then placed in situations (matches) and tension is created between them.

So, when it came to booking our bears, what story did we want to tell? Who were the characters? And what motivated them?  One thing that didn’t require much debate was that the bears should be the babyfaces of our story, and that the dogs would be the heels. To bridge the gap between the sensibilities of baiting fans of Shakespeare’s time and those of spectators today, we felt it should be the bears that our audience cheered and felt sympathy for. Inevitably given the moral binaries of wrestling storytelling, this meant the dogs would be the antagonists. A clear babyface/heel dynamic is important to wrestling storytelling, it guides who the audiences cheer and boo for, but also structures the match from a choreographic perspective.

Traditionally the hero starts the match with the upper hand, during a period of action called the ‘shine’. This is a chance for the hero to display superior skill and moral virtue. Next the heel takes control, typically by cheating, this is called the ‘heat’. The goal of the heat is to get the audience to cheer the babyface and boo the heel. In the simplest stories, the babyface then makes a dramatic comeback which leads to victory. This narrative can be read in other theatrical combat, in movie fight scenes like ‘Star Wars’ or ‘’Rocky’. Did bearwards perhaps engage in similar storytelling craft to make baiting more entertaining?

After some deliberation the structure we chose was a six-person tag team match, which would pit a team of three bears against a team of dogs. We then invited other wrestlers, selecting them based on their artistry and size. We needed wrestlers comfortable with the unusual subject material, a big wrestler to play the bull, and agile wrestlers to play the dogs.

When it came to the day of the workshop, our story changed in interesting ways. As the wrestlers and I learnt more about the history animal baiting and the work of the research team, certain assumptions were affirmed, but also some were challenged. As the BOB team divulged their findings, we began to understand more fully where we fitted in and what we could contribute. The initial plans grew in complexity and greater nuance was added. One of our bears would be blind, attack and maul an audience member and attempt to defecate in his bearward’s hat. All details gained from the research team. They would also all have names, which is in keeping with the celebrity status fighting bears enjoyed, names like project team favourite Beef of Ipswich, for example. This is an interesting link to wrestling. When the sport became theatricalised in the early 20^th century, inventive names and exciting backstories became commonplace. This is a motif borrowed from fairgrounds and freakshows, but does it perhaps trace back all the way to animal baiting?

Crucially, based on the new information gleaned during the workshop, Rachel came up with a story that replaced the simple good bears/bad dogs narrative. Instead, we would try to approach the characters from the perspectives of the animals bound up in this cruel game. How would these animals feel about the violence they were forced to participate in? New roles were added to facilitate these guiding questions. The bears were led by a bearward played by performance artist and playwright Heather Bandenburg and the dogs by a baiter who would now be the true villain of the story, played by a wrestler called Beau.

So, we had three bears of varying sizes: a baby bear (Rachel) and medium bear (Richard) who was now blind, and a large bear called Daddy (Kevin). The dogs were a pair of ferocious killing machines (Mikey and Lee) and a third dog (Paloma) who in our story had only just commenced their training. There was also a bull (Charlie) who would make a dramatic appearance as the performance reached its closing moments.

Rather than recount the action blow-by-blow, in the spirit of von Wedel I offer my own eye-witness report of the play that took place that day…

A bearward of questionable repute assembles her band of battling bears of varying sizes in the playfight wrestling school, London… She gestures to the assembled crowd gathered in blood-thirsty anticipation around the ring to bring their finest mastiff dogs to challenge her fighters… A baiter of two prize mastiff hounds and one nervous pup accepts and one by one they test themselves against the great bears… The bears fight valiantly, and the audience marvel at their strength and courage. One bear even escapes and mauls a baiting-connoisseur [*In baiting circles this is an honour of the highest regard, akin to catching a home run baseball] , which causes great excitement. In a final charivari a mighty bull is unleashed upon the unsuspecting dogs and the rest of hell breaks loose… The bull tosses the mastiffs through the air with ease, only to finally be felled by a most unlikely assailant, the reluctant pup from the first act, who finally discovers the hidden predatory instinct that her master craved. As the play comes to an end, the crowd serenade the victors with streamers of many colours.  

From the initial ideas through the performance itself… the creation of this performance was unique. While wrestling has in recent years become more experimental and increasingly recognised as an artistic practice, to my knowledge this is the first-time wrestling has been used as a method to study the past. Reflecting on the event, BOB principal investigator Hannah O’Regan had this to say:

While working with wrestlers may seem an unusual move our BOB research suggests baiting, as well as being a bloodsport, must also have been a managed performance as the bears were needed to fight another day. I’ve been surprised through our conversations at Ruff Play and after, just how many overlaps or parallels there seem to be between baiting and wrestling, and it’s provided huge food for thought. I was so impressed with the skills and knowledge of the wrestlers, and the power and sensitivity of their performance, which really made a visceral impact on me. I cannot wait to continue the conversations as I think we still have a lot to share and learn.

In the coming months you will be able to watch this unique performance in full as a film, along with other highlights from the Ruff Play workshop.