Beautiful Burnout, the first collaboration between Frantic Assembly and the National Theatre of Scotland, will be bursting onto stages across Scotland this summer, immersing the audience in the visceral world of boxing – bringing the experiences of those whose lives are closely involved with the sport to the stage.

Yet as I write, a number of other shows open taking boxing or other forms of sports fighting as their theme – and over the past year I’ve seen three entirely independent shows, all of which had their basis in the notion of an organised fight. Something is obviously in the air! As it is such a zeitgeist moment, let’s take this chance to reflect on those three shows I’ve seen to date, and what this all might mean…

Although these three shows all had boxing or fighting sports at their core, each expanded upon the source material in a very different way. The first, by Fredrik Lloyd, is one man’s theatrical reflection on his improbable cage fighting career; the second, by Athina Vahla, is a contemporary dance piece exploring the relationship between dance and boxing, and the physiological responses of boxers and dancers; and the third, by Ragroof Theatre, is a community-engaged site-specific performance set in a boxing ring (to be toured outdoors this summer).

Fredrik Lloyd’s Survival of the Thinnest is the true tale of a pale poet who faces his greatest fears and ends up a super-feather-lightweight cage fighting legend. A self-styled ‘stand-up poet’ Lloyd mixes this poetic account of his fight club days with physical re-enactment. He has a quietness on stage which draws the audience in; his show an inspiring and uplifting fifty minutes’ entertainment.

In conversation, Fredrik told me that there is some parallel between cage fighting and stand-up poetry, in that you need to win the crowd over in the first couple of minutes. Essentially, both are a matter of showmanship. Fredrik told me that the spectators at a cage fight are a ‘crowd’, but they are mostly silent, respectful and well behaved. Quite unlike the crowd in a movie fight scene, in fact – more like a theatre crowd. Yet cage fighting isn’t ‘theatre’; it is a knock-out sport and the injuries very real.

Fredrik was a little surprised by the audience he attracted at the Edinburgh Fringe. A lot of nurses came along: they recognised many of the injuries he talked about and often laughed at ‘inappropriately painful moments’. By the end of the run, the house was full of old ladies; they liked the stories, could laugh at the injuries and were not afraid of anything a skinny poet might come out with.

Fredrik also talks of the primalism of fighting. Facing your worst fears in a small cage results in nothing domestic to worry about: bills hold little fear; washing-up is done without a second thought; tax bills become a shared joke. He also appreciates the poetic in the sport. He feels it’s like a modern dance, when done well – a physical contact sport can be both intimate and beautiful.

From oratory to choreography: Fight Club is a collaboration between choreographer Athina Vahla, dancer Leon Baugh, dance scientist Emma Redding, film-maker Monica Alcazar and photographer Helen Burrows, alongside boxer Gary McCarthy and his trainer father Michael from Repton Boys Boxing Club in Bethnal Green.

Fascinated by the rituals and rhythms of boxing and enthused to explore similarities to dance movement, Athina began looking to develop a unique dance-sport movement language by establishing a relationship with the historic boxing club.

The first stage of the research was focused on training. She presented her early findings to an audience at Chisenhale Dance Space in East London, where I saw a preliminary performance in autumn 2009. Five initial sessions were held at both Chisenhale and Repton and the work was documented by Alcazar and Burrows. This took place as part of Burrows’ ongoing photographic project with the club, No Guts, No Glory.

I asked Athina what inspired her to explore the similarities between boxing and dance movement. She told me she had always liked watching boxing and had been looking to create a new hybrid performance, which she calls sport theatre, for a few years. To this end, she has shown particular interest in the notion of agon (Greek: struggle/contest) as a means for the performer or athlete to redefine themselves. She is particularly interested in the threshold of pain and exhaustion and what makes someone continue beyond physical limits. For Athina, boxing encapsulates these elements – it is bare, direct, often damaging, and yet highly structured and focused. Boxing is like a choreography in which each movement has its cost and no one knows the end.

I wondered how, as a woman, it felt to enter a boxing club for the first time. Athina describes the boxing club as a hermetic, singular world without women, highly codified. She had to work hard to find the language to communicate to the Repton representatives that she even held a genuine interest in the sport, let alone that dance and boxing share affinities. She recalled, however, that Ali famously asked Foreman: ‘Shall we dance?’

Through her investigation, Athina found that the similarities between the two disciplines were the need for rhythm and a strong centre. In a fight, as in a dance, gestural precision, tight structure and painstaking preparation are key to success. Boxing is not, though, ultimately about aesthetics – the most important thing is the outcome, who wins. The task of locating a space between boxing and dance where each discipline keeps its integrity and yet an exchange is possible was more challenging than anticipated. Fight Club was presented at Chisenhale to an audience accustomed to dance, but Athina intends to present the work to boxing spectators too. ‘Ideally I would like to bring the two audiences together, so spectators/audience meet and learn from each other.’

The next stage of Vahla’s research is the fight, including the rituals of preparation. She intends to invite a team of experts and commentators to sit between the spectators and the ring during the fight and attempt a live analysis of physio-psychological functions in boxing. Future plans look to a larger scale, site-specific work where the theatrical experience is built around the boxing ring as an arena and explores the importance of space.

Ragroof Theatre are a multidisciplinary collective who have made a name for themselves creating site-specific work, often outdoors. Most of their productions are developed from real-life histories and community engagement. They are currently redeveloping their latest show Gloves On, to be toured this summer to urban spaces, such as skate parks, and on the street arts festival circuit. The show has been a year in development, including work-in-progress showings in boxing clubs. I met with company co-director and performer Ivan Fabrega to talk with him about the provenance and development of the show.

Performed at night and set in a floodlit boxing ring, Gloves On investigates masculinity, ritual, spectatorship. The show explores boxing and its place in the British psyche through a multidisciplinary production that incorporates spoken text, rap and physical performance (and yes, boxing!). The audience are asked to support either the champion or the challenger and the two opposing teams enjoy the show in separate fenced areas, covered with graffitied canvas.

I asked Ivan whether training to be a boxer held any parallels with his background in circus and dance. He told me that boxing training is very basic – no fancy equipment, just circuit training, press-ups, sit-ups, punching bags, skipping. But although boxing is physically demanding way beyond anything he has done before, a contest produces a huge amount of adrenalin, and in its dependence on fitness, calculated risk, and reactions in-the-moment, there is a parallel buzz with circus skills such as trapeze.

I wanted to know what Ivan enjoyed about boxing and he told me that, for a man who has never had a fight in ‘real life’, the training and ‘punching the shit out of a bag’, gave route to his inner masculinity. Violence is unavoidable, yet it’s a calculated violence: it is not about anger, it’s about getting the points. ‘A boxer who gets angry will lose.’

Ivan reflected on how certain boxers are revered as fantastic movers: there are fighters who slug it out, and then there are the artistic ones, like Ali, who was a beautiful, technical fighter. Yet although technique is important, ultimately ‘you’ve got to have heart’.

Gloves On has developed from within the boxing community so I wondered what the new street arts context would mean for the show. Ivan feels it’s a positive thing – the show provides a theatrical context for boxing to be seen, and to explore the history and complexity of the sport. I attended a workin-progress preview shared with the boxing community, ex-boxers and boxers’ families: for many of those Ragroof worked with, going to the theatre and being in a show was a new experience.

The question of audience is key for these pieces, as the artists have testified. In creating work in direct collaboration with professional fighters and their communities, they pose the question of whether such shows can have resonance outside of those specific groups. By taking their shows into arts venues and festival spaces, they are forcing traditionally passive theatre audiences to take the fighting sports seriously and to put themselves in the shoes of sports spectators. And in taking the work back into the communities from which it came, they are bringing contemporary performance to people who perhaps wouldn’t otherwise experience it. Points all round!