Today, students at the Los Angeles High School of the Arts will be getting a lesson in Shakespeare, but there aren’t any books in this class.

“Typical Shakespeare plays, there's often swords, so it's a key component of understanding and knowing Shakespeare is understanding and knowing swords. That, and it's also just super fun,” said Alicia Green, Director of Education and Community Outreach at A Noise Within, a Pasadena theater company that specializes in Shakespeare.

Denise De Leon recently transferred from Venice High. Now in the 9th grade, this is her second acting class, but her first time training with a sword. 

“I think it’s really interesting to learn about because we don’t do much of this at school,” said Denise.

The program is provided by A Noise Within, but today, they’re visiting one of the RFK Community Schools to demonstrate how people settled things back in the day.

“We bring Shakespeare into the classrooms with students because we want to make them feel like this is part of their history and part of their culture,” said Green.

“For example, with Othello today, it's all about jealousy and betrayal and best friends and anyone can relate to that. Particularly a high school student.”

Time for some stage combat. 

Raisa Donato is an actor and got her start in stage combat with Passado Action Theater while in high school. Now, she teaches fight choreography and sword fighting and she's sharing those skills with Denise. With characters like Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, sword fighting isn’t seen as something exclusively for men anymore.

“Nowadays, guns can be a bit triggering on the stage,” said Donato. “I think swords can provide that little flash that stage, that theater really needs. But it also, it’s also classical and it really shows respect for our art and our weapons as well.”

Sword fighting and stage combat are important skills to have as a performer, but respect is the real lesson here. Despite concerns with violence on campuses, students agree sword fighting is an art form and a sport. 

“I think it was really an interesting skill to have added on to the other things I have about theater,” said Denise.