Mary Sola Spohn

Mary Sola Spohn is the owner of Swordplay LA, one of the oldest fencing and theatrical combat studios in the Greater Los Angeles area. In addition to training fencers of all ages and experience levels, Swordplay offers lessons in onscreen/onstage weapons combat and hand-to-hand combat training. Mary's career began as a competitive fencer. Her 20+ years of fencing experience includes earning multiple national medals, as well as a NCAA Division 1 fencing scholarship. Her collegiate career culminated in her team's victory of a Big 10 Conference Championship. Fencing paved the way for Mary to seamlessly transition to learn, train, and perform fight choreography and sword combat. She specializes as an onscreen swords and fencing trainer and fight choreographer, leveraging her extensive fencing background to design training that is uniquely and highly technical. Unlike a traditional swords expert, Mary's fencing mastery and athletic career creates a training style that is based off of the "must-have" fundamentals of realistic blade work and believable combat: tempo, timing, balance, and footwork. The action scenes that Mary creates and prepares her clients for are characterized by an attention to detail, fundamentals, and believability that cannot be rivaled by other Western-style sword trainers in the industry. Mary's recent training, fight choreography, and choreography consultant client portfolio includes training A-List celebrity talent, Academy Award winning talent, Olympic athletes, and child film/television stars on projects of varying size and scope (complete resume is available upon request). As a female in a male-dominated industry, Mary is sensitive to the importance of creating safe and inclusive spaces for the clients that she trains. Her pursuit of inclusion within creative spaces is largely informed by her awareness that this industry often lacks diverse representation; she is committed to being a vessel through which all actors - especially women - feel capable, strong, and confident onscreen. She prides herself on the approachability, adaptability, and collaborative attitude that she brings into training sessions and onto sets. Mary has been featured in feature and short films, commercials, print, and live performances. She continues to train daily in competitive sport fencing, as well as historical fencing. She supplements her repertoire of Western-style training with Filipino Martial Arts Balintawak (Level 2, Bryan Sloyer), as well as other martial arts and combat training. Her skillset also extends to: firearms and tactical training, stunt/on-camera performance driving (Scotty Richards' s Tactical Driving School), and storytelling/screenwriting (UCLA's Professional Program in Screenwriting). Mary is a skilled and passionate trainer, choreographer, and consultant who seeks all opportunities to empower her fellow artists to become stronger and more dimensional performers.