Bio Page

~for~

JOHN S. LENNOX

John has trained in various forms of swordplay for over 20 years. Beginning with the katana, he later moved into the western weapon styles. Through his involvement in stage combat for theatre over the past 20 years he began to study a myriad of weapons. He is a Fight Director for Art of Combat, teaches stage combat at Lansing Community College, and is their in-house fight director. John also teaches stage combat and is the in-house fight director for Wayne State University.

In October of 1999 he met Jared Kirby at a convention in Chicago. The convention was the first WMAW, and this was the first time he was introduced to the works of actual historical masters. Realizing that he had been training in these styles for years without knowing the actual names of the masters themselves, and listening to the modern historical combat instructors voice their disappointment about the inaccuracies found in stage combat, he decided to bridge the gap between stage combat and historically accurate combat training.

He brought this philosophy back to the members of Art of Combat, and AoC now holds as their mission to choreograph works that are exciting to watch, safe to perform, and as true as possible to the historical style represented.

John is an instructor with the Historical Martial Study Society and with the Historic Maritime Combat Association. He was one of the three instructors for the Boarding Actions Class at the International Swordfighting and Martial Arts Convention, of which he is also co-founder.

John is currently in his dissertation phase of his PhD studies at Wayne State University. He minored in Historic Fencing, and his dissertation focuses on the relationship between actual personal combat and stage combat from the late 16^th to early 20^th centuries.

He is also working on a book on boarding tactics from the 17^th through 19^th centuries entitled By Sword and Tomahawk with Gareth Thomas and Steve Huff.