Rising Stars: Meet John Evenden of Buckhead

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Evenden.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember. My parents are both patrons and performers in both live theater and film, so I grew up with stories like Star Wars, Princess Bride, and various iterations of Shakespeare on perpetual repeat. As a child I invented a version of Dungeons and Dragons called “the talking game” (imagine a cross between D&D and Calvinball from the old Calvin and Hobbes comic) before I ever knew there was an official version with real rules. As I got older I discovered a love of martial arts…largely due to the large amount of bullying I had to endure as my nerdy proclivities became apparent to my peers. Fight direction came as a natural blend of these two interests; storytelling through violence and character development by means of fisticuffs. A career in the martial arts as a professional fighter, personal trainer, and coach, has taught me that a fight is, at it’s core, a form of communication: when MacDuff confronts his titular nemesis in MacBeth, the latter begins what initially looks like a soliloquy, but MacDuff literally cuts him off by saying “I have no words; my voice is in my sword.” When words aren’t enough, we fight, and when we do, we fight like ourselves but with an exclamation mark; the sign of a good fight scene is when we learn more about the characters while simultaneously being moved and thrilled by the choreography, and I live for the moments where a universal truth of what it means to be a human is revealed and explored with a punch, a slash, or a decision to not give up.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. The bullying that necessitated my love of combat sports was challenging to overcome, both in the moment and how it affected me as a person later. Moreover, the cult of personality and toxic masculinity that is utterly pervasive within the world of gym culture generally and martial arts/combat sports in particular took a good bit of self-reflection and therapy to come to terms with. It is no coincidence that hyper-masculine faux-intellectual grifters like Andrew Tate have been so successful in preying upon the insecurities of young men throughout the world. Moreover, a career in the arts has never been an easy road to walk; both due to a lack of funding and the abundance of competition. To this day I am cursed with the torturous emancipation of the freelancer; anything is possible, but nothing is certain, and I’m never sure where or what my next project is going to be. It can be nerve-wracking at times, but I’ve found that artists do what they do because they don’t really have a choice to do otherwise; there is something in them that needs to speak, be heard, and to affect people with the stories they tell.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I wear a few hats in the worlds of theater and film; I’ve acted, directed, been a stuntman, and done some writing, but generally I would describe myself first and foremost as a fight director and stunt coordinator; if your film or theatrical production has any amount of physicality or violence, I’m the person you call to make everything look real, be safe, make the audience feel the way you want them to feel, and tell the story you want to tell. What distinguishes me from many of my colleagues is probably the depth of my research and my analytical approach to the process. I’m eyeballs-deep in ADHD and have been hyper-fixating on this topic for almost 35 years, to the point where I am genuinely and truly obsessed; my bookshelf is saturated in highlighted texts on storytelling and punch mechanics, I am subscribed to dozens of YouTube channels from professional fighters and storytellers, and my Spotify is half podcasts focusing on combat sports and D&D. Consequently I can very cleanly and concisely break down every step of every motion and the purpose of every movement, from a historical, practical, or storytelling perspective. For example, power from your unarmed strikes comes from 5 different sources, and I can name them and why we should or shouldn’t use each one in a given circumstance, on stage, film, or in real life. There are 4 rules for landing a contact stage punch, and I can break them down for the actor piece by piece, from naming the muscles they need to use to explaining what being hit in the spot feels like and the effect it might have. There are dozens of historically accurate guards and wards for how to hold each possible type of theatrical weapon and I can tell you about each one and why the character you are playing might choose each one, and what that might say about their character, from both a historical perspective and what an untrained audience is likely to read into it. This is a genuine infatuation for me, and there is nothing I love more than to share it with other people and make them feel things. That’s what art is for, after all.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
My father talking to me by animating a stuffed animal hippopotamus named Moof. Moof was a toy we found at a garage sale when I was about 5 years old and, even though I am now a 43 year old man, that little stuffed hippo still occasionally sends me emails or short videos on holidays. Moof taught me how fictional characters can have a genuine impact on who we are as real people; characters like Darth Vader, Captain America, and Hamlet aren’t “real”, but they have affected who I am as a person more than many actual people I have met. Moreover, Moof’s sometimes unique perspective helped teach me how to see myself and my actions how someone else might, which has been invaluable to me as a storyteller and more generally as a human being who chooses to share my life with other human beings. And finally, perhaps most importantly, despite my trials, passions and obsessions, Moof reminds me not to take anything <i>too</i> seriously; particularly not myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://johnevenden.wordpress.com/
• Instagram: capthippo1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.evenden.5