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Part 5

You are going to read an article about a woman who trains actors in fighting skills. For questions
31 – 36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

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Kombat Kate
James Stanton meets ‘Kombat Kate’ Waters, who trains theatre actors in how to ‘fight’ on stage.

There must be few occasions when it would be really rude to refuse an invitation to head-butt someone
you’ve just met! But I’m in one of those right now. I’m in a rehearsal room in a theatre with a group of
actors, facing up to stage fighting director Kate Waters. I’ve already dragged her around the room and
slapped her on the arm. Now she wants me to head-butt her. But fear not, this is all strictly pretend!
‘Imagine there’s a tin can on my shoulder,’ she says. ‘Now try to knock it off.’ I lower my head as instructed,
then lift it sharply, aiming for the imaginary can, hoping desperately that I don’t miscalculate the angle and
end up doing damage to her face. To my amazement, I get it right. ‘That was good,’ says Waters. ‘Now
maybe try it again without smiling.’
Waters, known in the industry as Kombat Kate, is showing me how actors fight each other without getting
hurt, and that includes sword-fighting. (She inspires fierce devotion: when I tweet that I’m meeting Waters,
one actress friend responds: ‘She’s amazing. She taught me how to be a secret service agent in two days.’)
Perhaps the most famous play Kate has worked on recently was called Noises Off. She taught the cast how to
fall down stairs without breaking any bones. One of the fight scenes is fairly close, Kate tells me, to the one
we’re trying out now. ‘I’ve just slowed it down a bit,’ she says tactfully, before inviting me to throw her
against the wall. I obey, making sure I let go of her quickly, so she can control her own movement. Push your
opponent too hard, and they will hit the wall for real. I watch her hit the wall before falling to the ground.
She’s fine, of course. ‘That’s my party trick,’ she says with a grin. ‘Works every time.’
Once the lesson is over Kate tells me how she became one of only two women on the official register of stage
fight directors. Already a keen martial arts expert from childhood, Kate did drama at university, and one
module of her course introduced her to stage combat. When she made enquiries about the possibility of
teaching it as a career, she was told about the register and the qualifications she’d need to be accepted onto it.
line 22 It was no small order: as well as a certificate in advanced stage combat, she would need a black belt in karate
and proficiency in fencing, a sport she’d never tried before.
But she rose to the challenge and taught the subject for several years at a drama college before going
freelance and becoming a fight advisor for the theatrical world. The play she’s working on is Shakespeare’s
Richard III. This involves a famous sword fight. With no instructions left by the great playwright other than –
Enter Richard and Richmond: they fight, Richard dies – the style and sequence of the fight is down to Kate
and the actors.
‘I try to get as much information as possible about what a fight would have been like in a particular period,’
line 30 Kate explains. ‘But because what I’m eventually doing is telling a dramatic story, not all of it is useful. The
scene has to be exciting and do something for the audience.’
Ultimately, of course, a stage fight is all smoke and mirrors. In our lesson, Kate shows me how an actor will
stand with his or her back to the audience ahead of a choreographed slap or punch. When the slap comes it
makes contact not with skin but with air: the actor whacks his chest or leg to make the sound of the slap.
In the rehearsal room, I can’t resist asking Kate how she thinks she would fare in a real fight. Would she give
her attacker a hard time? She laughs, ‘Oh, I’d be awful,’ she says. ‘I only know how to fake it.’ I can’t help
thinking, however, that she’s just being rather modest.
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31 In the first paragraph, the writer is aware of

A a critical attitude from Kate.

B the concern of the other actors.
C the need to reassure his readers.
D having been in a similar situation before.

32 How does the writer feel when Kate mentions the tin can?

A worried about hurting Kate

B relieved that Kate is just pretending
C concerned that it may injure his head
D convinced that he won’t take it seriously enough

33 When Kate and the writer repeat the fight scene from Noises Off, we learn that

A the writer isn’t sure of his instructions.

B Kate has adapted it slightly for the writer to try.
C the writer is initially unwilling to do it.
D Kate has to react quickly to a mistake the writer makes.

34 What does the phrase ‘no small order’ (line 22) tell us about stage combat?

A Kate knew she would love learning about it.

B It is something very few people ever perfect.
C Studying it required a lot of obedience and respect.
D Qualifying to teach it would be a long and difficult process.

35 What does the writer tell us about the sword fight in the play Richard III?

A Its details need to be made up.

B It’s a particularly challenging scene to do.
C Its action is conveyed through spoken words.
D It is widely agreed to be the most exciting of its kind.

36 What does ‘it’ refer to in line 30?

A information
B a fight
C a particular period
D a dramatic story

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Part 6

You are going to read a newspaper article about the man who designed the recycling symbol. Six
sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A – G the one which fits
each gap (37 – 42). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.
373839404142

How the recycling

symbol was created
Gary Anderson designed a symbol which we
see everywhere nowadays.
I studied engineering at the University of I think I found out I’d won the competition in a
Southern California at a time when there was a letter. Was I excited? Well, yes of course – but
lot of emphasis in the United States on training not that excited. x39xx xx So it just seemed
young people to be engineers. That said, I like, of course I would win! There was a
eventually switched to architecture. I just monetary prize, though for the life of me I can’t
couldn’t get a grasp on electronics and remember how much it was... about $2,000?
architecture seemed more concrete to me.
When I finished my studies, I decided to go into
It was around that time that I saw a poster urban planning and I moved to Los Angeles. It
advertising a design competition being run by seems funny, but I really played down the fact
the Container Corporation of America. The idea that I’d won this competition. I was afraid it
was to create a symbol to represent recycled would make me look as though I was interested
paper. One of my college requirements had in graphics, rather than urban planning.
been a graphic design course so I thought I’d x40xx xx I remember seeing it once on a leaflet
give it a go. It didn’t take me long to come up which had been produced on recycled paper,
with my design: only a day or two. x37xx xx But but then it disappeared.
I already had arrows and angles in my mind
because on my course I’d done a presentation A while after graduating, I flew to Amsterdam for
on recycling waste water. I’d come up with a a holiday. I’ll never forget: when I walked off the
graphic that described this process very simply. plane, I saw my symbol. It was on a big
recycling bin. And it was bigger than a beach
The problem with the design I’d done earlier ball! x41xxx x I was really taken aback. That
was that it seemed flat, two-dimensional. So was quite a long time ago though. Since then,
when I sat down to enter the competition, I I’ve got more qualifications and worked for quite
thought back to a field trip in elementary school a few different firms, some more
to a newspaper office where we’d been shown environmentally aware than others.
how paper was fed over rollers as it was printed.
x38xx xx The three arrows in it look like strips I feel much prouder of the recycling symbol now
of folded-over paper. I drew them in pencil, and than I used to, probably because it’s so widely
then traced over everything in black ink. These seen. Maybe this design has been more
days, with computer graphics packages, it’s rare important to me than I’d thought. x42xx xx
that designs are quite so plain. There’s more to me than the recycling symbol.
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A Still, I’d hate to think that my life’s work is E I realise that seems ridiculous for something
defined by it. that’s been so successful.

B I used what I’d seen to create the image. F Also, nothing much happened to the symbol
for a while.

C I’m no expert on recycling but I can certainly G I guess at that point in my life I had an
see its value. exaggerated sense of my own importance.

D I hadn’t thought about it for years and there it

was right in my face.

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