Staff
Joseph Travers (Founder, Managing Director, Instructor) (SAFD Certified Fight Director/Teacher, FDC Certified Fight Director) has created hundreds of fights, stunts and action sequences for stage and screen. Broadway: Bronx Bombers; Off-Broadway: The View Upstairs (Lynn Redgrave Theatre), While I Yet Live, Bronx Bombers (Primary Stages), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Essential Self-Defense, Blue Door (Playwrights Horizons), Too Much Memory (New York Theatre Workshop); Regional: Shakespeare in Love (Capital Repertory Company), Treasure Island (Fulton Theatre, Maine State Music Theatre), Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline (Virginia Shakespeare Festival); Opera: The Wreckers (Bard Summerscape), Counting Sheep (3LD), Don Giovanni (Modus Opera), A Tale of Two Cities (Seaside Music Theatre). Joe served as stunt coordinator for the films Know Fear, The Depths, Lifted, A-Alike, and served as stunt coordinator and sword master for the fantasy’s epic Tower of Silence. He is a regular contributor to the SAFD journal The Fight Master through his column, Fight Matters. He is also a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC). As a teacher, he has helped thousands of students learn the principles of stage combat at high schools, universities, conservatories, and in private lessons. He heads the Stage Combat Program at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. He founded Swordplay in 1995 to be New York City's premier provider of instruction in safe and effective stage combat techniques to professional actors. He is pleased and proud that so many performers have chosen to train at Swordplay.
Gabriel Rosario (Instructor) is a graduate from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. He is an Advanced Actor Combatant, Stunt Performer and Fight Choreographer who has participated in plays such as Foggy Dew, The Adventures of Don Quijote, Follies, The Relationship Type, as well as being Fight Captain and Assistant Fight Director for the World Premiere of Treasure Island at the Fulton Theatre and its East Coast Premiere at Maine State Music Theatre. His film and TV credits include Dead@17: Rebirth, Tower of Silence, as well as the upcoming pilot, Dry Time, etc. His credits as a Fight Choreographer include Romeo and Juliet, Faust on 147th Street, and Valor, Agravio y Mujer at Repertorio Español (HOLA Award Best Fight Choreography), La Paz Perpetua at Repertorio Español, Rut and the short film Les Chienes.
Brynn Knickle (Instructor) is a graduate of the Studio Program at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy where she currently serves as a faculty member in the Stage Combat department. She is a Fight Choreographer, Teacher Apprentice with Fight Directors Canada, Actor Combatant under the SAFD, and a Stunt Performer. She has choreographed fights for films such as Good People, Hook Line & Sinker, and One Fine Sundae. She has also acted as Assistant Fight Director for The Lightning Thief (Off-Broadway to Broadway), Cymbeline at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Tink! at the NYMF, and assisted on the production of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord. Brynn is also a member of the all female Shakespearean fight company, the Vixens En Garde.
