ACTION HERO ACADEMY
The Academy of Theatrical Combat & SAGA Action Arts have teamed up to present, THE ACTION HERO ACADEMY, a collaborative training experience for actors and stunt performers looking to master multiple disciplines of combat, action performance, and acting for film and television.
CURRICULUMS
Academy of Theatrical Combat
ATC offers hand-to-hand combat and weapons training for action actors, stunt performers, and anyone interested in learning about movie fights. Students begin at the basic level, covering safety and the primary techniques of hand-to-hand combat, rolls and falls, cutlass, broadsword, and quarterstaff. Intermediate and advanced students continue mastering and learning more advanced applications for all these disciplines as well as moving on to double cutlass, rapier and dagger, smallsword, and katana. Professional-level students coordinate original fight scenes and focus on adapting other weapons and styles of combat of their choice to Film/TV/Theatre. For more information about the ATC Curriculum, please visit theatricalcombat.com
Saga Action Arts
SAGA was designed to effectively train the aspiring “action artist” in the same skill sets as modern action heroes. the SAGA curriculum consists of three main training pillars: the SAGA 9 Weapons Template, Action Flow, and Striking Arts. Drawing from a wide range of practical martial arts systems like Filipino Martial Arts (stick, knife, sword, and staff fighting), Jeet Kune Do, Savate and Thai Kickboxing, Silat, Kung Fu, Ninjutsu, Karate, Krav Maga, Combatives and various flow-movement systems, SAGA offers a comprehensive approach to modern armed and unarmed training. Developed through the lens of action film, television, video games, anime, and comic book aesthetics, SAGA’s techniques and drills merge substance with style into a streamlined pedagogy for creating fight choreography and action design for performing artists and visual storytellers.
INSTRUCTORS
Jayme Woj
Jayme is a SAG-AFTRA actor, stunt fighter, and fight coordinator based in NY. He is the head instructor of The Academy of Theatrical Combat (ATC) Curriculum at Action Hero Academy. For the past 30 years, ATC has provided action design, fight choreography, violence coordination, sword fighting, and theatrical combat training for film, tv, motion capture, and live production. Jayme has been instructing the curriculum since 2018. In 2022, Jayme also became the Master Instructor of the Combat for Film & Stage program at Maggie Flanigan Studio.
With more than 15 years of experience in swordplay, Aikido, Kenpo Arnis, kickboxing, and theatrical hand-to-hand combat, Jayme’s work as an action actor includes credits on various Star Wars and Disney projects, Netflix’s Fuller House, Amazon’s Gravesend, The Globe’s Hamlet, and more. As a fight coordinator, he began as an on-set assistant to Hollywood Stunt Coordinators, Dan Speaker and Jan Bryant. Since then, Jayme has worked as a fight coordinator for Indie Films in both Hollywood and NYC. He specializes in creating action that tells a story and moves narratives forward.
Jayme currently serves as co-founder of TandemVision Productions, an independent production company that is dedicated to helping actors and filmmakers self-production their own films and series. Through TandemVision, he also provides audition and career coaching for actors.
Dylan Hintz
Dylan is a SAG-AFTRA Stunt Performer in Brooklyn, NY. He has performed action and stunts in over 30 professional productions, including Marvel’s Jessica Jones, The Blacklist on NBC, and FOX’s GOTHAM. His martial arts training goes back 15 years, and covers Savate, Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Ninjutsu, Keysi Fighting Method, Jeet Kune Do, and multiple styles of Filipino Martial Arts.
Dylan is co-founder of SAGA Action Arts, a methodology that explores the principles of stage and screen combat and connects them to various real-world martial arts and fighting systems. In 2011 he founded the DC Stunt Coalition in Rockville, MD, to help aspiring stunt performers get started on their own career paths. As a professional videographer and editor, Dylan has produced and directed multiple award-winning short films and continues to combine all the above skills to design action, previs, and test fight videos for productions and performers in both DC and NYC.
Trainer Certifications in Jeet Kune Do and FMA from Bryan Stoops, Apprentice Instructor Stage 1 Level 1 in Filipino Combatives Global under GM Felix Cortes, Red Glove in Savate under the USSF, senior student in both Shaolin Kung Fu at Self Mastery Systems and JKD at Maryland Jeet Kune Do, MovNat Level 1 Trainer Certification, Certified in all 8 weapons with the SAFD, Coordinator and Choreography work for HBO, CBS, and National Geographic.
Abra Burkett
Abra Burkett is a SAG-AFTRA stunt performer and actor in Brooklyn, NY. She has been training in and doing stunts for eight years and has been training in multiple systems of martial arts for more than a decade. She was a live stunt performer at Six Flags America for the 2019 season and has since done stunts in various films and television shows (such as The Blacklist and No Hard Feelings).
She is the co-runner of the DC Stunt Coalition and SAGA Action Arts. As a Personal Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Coach, Abra is certified under ISSA. She would also like it to be known that she has a Masters in Sociology.