Roy William Cox

An American Horseback Jouster

by Gael Stirler

Roy Cox never was able to separate his loves for martial and dramatic arts. He was told at an early age that there was "no way anyone's ever going to combine martial arts and acting" and he would have to chose between the two. But the rest of his life has been spent proving that wrong. He is the founder of the American Academy of Stage and Screen Combat Choreographers and the owner of the Cimmerian Combatives Company. He and his crew provide jousting entertainment at 5 fairs each year.

This year he can be seen at Scarborough Faire April 29th through June 18th, 1995.

Roy took up boxing at age 5 to avoid getting beaten up. He was the 4th of 8 kids in a military family and, since they moved around a lot, he needed all the help he could get. He had inherited his parent's love of fencing and once stabbed a neighbor kid while acting out a battle. The neighbor was okay but Roy didn't touch swords again for many years. Later he studied bando, Burmese kick-boxing, from Dr. Gyi at Ohio University. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and then, on scholarship, received an MFA in acting. After he achieved his black belt he began teaching kick-boxing but realized that the style had many problems inherent to learning it, so he started studying other styles of martial arts available to him.

Both parts of his nature were tugging him in separate directions--acting or martial arts. He loved the intensity and physicality of fighting but the lure of the stage was even stronger. Roy studied ten weeks with Morris Karnovski and, subsequently Roy interned at Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City. While `on holiday' in London, he trained in stage combat choreography with Bill Hobbs and Henry Marshall. Now the parts were beginning to fall into place. Roy began forming an idea for a type of combative entertainment that eventually became the Cimmerian Combatives Company.

Roy Cox became a member of the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) in 1978. Action adventure was `in' and he loved doing film work, but the work wasn't steady or as immediately gratifying as stage work. He wasn't satisfied with the way the SAFD teachers each had a different style and system for teaching. A student couldn't go from one teacher to another without starting all over. With a few like-minded directors, Roy created the American Academy of Stage and Screen Combat Choreographers. Together they formulated a system that would work within itself and between weapons that could allow uniformity of learning and repetition of basics, leading to perfection as in Oriental martial arts.

In 1980, while Roy was working costume and props at the Arena Stage, he got a call from the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida to choreograph their human chess match. Before leaving for Florida he was introduced to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. They were looking for someone to teach them stage combat. They hit it off so well that after his first year in Sarasota he joined them as their trainer and they toured Europe together.

That year both President Reagan and the Pope were shot. This caused a lot of suspicion and anti-American sentiment in Europe which made life for Roy uncomfortable. He reluctantly decided to return to the United States and Sarasota. During that time he had a prophetic dream, in which the winged heart logo of the Flying Karamazov Brothers landed on his head and became a winged helmet. Roy knew it was time to begin forming his own touring company.

Roy took two full-time jobs in Sarasota and slept in his van. He saved his money to start his own theatrical company. But by summer, at the New York Renaissance Festival in 1982, he met Ron Boulden, who was the entertainment director for Scarborough Renaissance Festival in Texas. Ron asked Roy to come to Scarborough and joust. Roy agreed and spent time training with James Zoppe and the Rosin-Back Riders in voltage, a Cossack-style of bareback riding, which was as close as he could get to training for the joust. At Scarborough he performed with The New Riders of the Golden Age from 1983 to 1990. It was very dangerous; he was not hurt in only 4 of his first 25 jousts. Finally, in 1990, Roy started a new group called the Free Lancers and rented horses from the New Riders. From there his Free Lancers grew into what is now the Cimmerian Combatives Company.

When not on the road fighting, teaching, and performing, Roy makes swords and hilts. He even ran a chainmail-making business for a time. He and his wife Katherine live in the middle of Tennessee, which is only 18 hours hauling distance from any of his performance sites. He met Katherine when he hired her to model his chainmail creations at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. Though they are settling down now to raise kids at "the Barony", they share the same interests in martial arts, stage and theater, and, for the last several years, jousting on horseback.

Working with horses is hard work. Traveling, much of the time away from the family he loves, makes it even more difficult. Roy hopes to get back to the stage and performing Shakespeare. When he does, he will take with him the knowledge that he has gained from his years spent living as a real Renaissance Man.

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This page was last updated Tuesday, 27-May-2003 13:21:18 EDT