Practice a lot or you might end up like this guy. (Photo: Associated Press)

There are really only two ways to look at a $300, 10-week class that teaches lightsaber skills to your 6-year-old: 1) Why would I pay that much money so my kid can learn to use something that doesn’t exist?; 2) Where do I sign?

“It really at the end of the day is about armed stage combat,” says Erin Steenson, 33, an Oakton actor who will teach the class at Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo this September. Steenson learned swordplay in April 2009 from Bette Cassatt (the “Jedi Master” who has taught many of Adventure’s lightsaber classes), when she first appeared in Cassatt’s touring adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

Until now, Steenson’s work with the elegant weapons from a more civilized age has been limited mostly to children’s parties and private, in-home lessons. While a fan of Star Wars movies (as a student at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., she drove into D.C. to see the The Phantom Menace when it came out), her fandom is probably not as intense as that of, say, someone who spends $400 on a two-program, strobing not-associated with Lucasfilm Ltd. lightsaber (or would spend nearly as much to teach his or her kid to handle one). “I’ve never read any of the books or seen the Clone Wars” cartoon series, she says. She is, however, boning up on her Episodes I-VI, particularly the fight scenes.

One thing she’s noticed? “Jedis almost always use two hands to handle their lightsabers.” Swordplay, she notes, is usually done with one hand, and while you can do Jedi moves one-handed, “it just looks different.” Her favorite Jedi? “Yoda. He’s hard to study, because he moves so quickly.” Is she worried about being in a room filled with armed elementary schoolers? “What if they think I’m Sith, right?” she says.

Adventure Theatre uses toy lightsabers in its classes. “They have sounds,” says Kathryn Hnatio, Adventure’s director of education and outreach. “We don’t usually use the sound — it gets loud and the kids have a hard time controlling it.”

The toy lightsabers, Steenson says, are comparable to the ones used onstage, finesse-wise. “You can easily replace that weapon and apply it to lightsaber.”

Filling the classes, Hnatio says, has not been a problem since they started in 2007. Adventure has had to split the course into two classes, one for children 6 to 8 years old, and the other for 9- to 12-year-olds. There are 12 students in each class (an even number, “obviously, because it’s a type of combat,” Hnatio says). Mostly it’s boys signing up, Hnatio says, though “every semester there are a couple of trouper girls” who very much hold their own. Adventure offers corporate training for adults, Hnatio says.

Jedi Warriors aren’t just commandos in bathrobes, they’re philosophers in thrall to an all-encompassing power. So part of Steenson’s portfolio is imbuing the lessons with the deeper messages from Star Wars. Luke Skywalker practiced lightsaber blindfolded while a Death Star-like remote hovered and shot at him; Steenson will get the children to take their first step into a larger world by making them sit in a circle during the first class, instructing them to close their eyes, then asking them questions about things they’ve seen. Also, first class, she’ll “use my Jedi powers” — and a little inside information — “to figure out what kids’ names are.”

As September looms, Steenson is looking for a Jedi outfit (she’s been poking around thinkgeek.com, also a source for wooden practice sabers and Yoda USB desk protectors) and pondering whether to teach under a Jedi name. She may, she thinks, hold a Jedi naming ceremony midway through the class. “I’ll get the ethic of the Force into the choreography,” she says. The final class will have a short presentation for parents. “You’d better believe,” Steenson says, “the Force will be involved.”