Why Contact Slaps Are Unsafe
Most of the time, yes, a slap which actually makes contact with the face lands without visible harm. But it is the one time in a hundred when things go wrong that should give us pause, because when it fails, it fails catastrophically.
Take the relaxed, slightly cupped hand. When it strikes the cheek, the air trapped inside the palm has to go somewhere. If the hand is just a fraction too close to the ear, that pressurized air finds its outlet straight down the ear canal, bursting the delicate tympanic membrane. Even with immediate treatment, healing is unpredictable; infections are common; hearing loss, temporary or permanent, is a real possibility. I have seen cases where a fingertip brushing the ear canal was enough to rupture the eardrum.
Or consider the relaxed palm that stiffens a little at impact. Or if the angle of hand to cheek is off one night by a degree or two. Instead of a cushion of air, the actor receives the ridge where fingers meet palm, or the heel of the hand. Now bone is striking bone, and the injuries are exactly what you would expect: dislocated jaws, broken cheekbones, cracked teeth, cartilage damage, broken hands. None of these belong in a rehearsal room.
Even when the initial contact does not cause serious damage, the trailing fingers may scrape across the eye or strike the nose. And in an effort to “make it safer,” some teachers have suggested slapping the neck instead. That advice has resulted in bruised tracheas, and in one recorded case, a collapsed carotid artery and death from lack of oxygen to the brain. Death — from a slap to the face.
[Since this piece was first written, further medical research has confirmed that even blows which don’t seem serious — the so-called subconcussive impacts — can cause measurable changes in the brain. A slap jars the head violently enough for the brain to collide with the skull, a coup/contrecoup effect. That is a real injury mechanism, whether or not the victim reports dizziness, blurred vision, or “seeing stars.” In addition, the face and ear are remarkably fragile. Ruptured eardrums, sudden hearing loss, and concussive symptoms have all been documented from a single slap.]
No one should have to risk blindness, deafness, broken bones, or worse simply because a script calls for a moment of violence.
Why Contact Slaps Make for Bad Acting
There is also the matter of performance. Even if a contact slap could somehow be rendered physically safe, it still works against the actor’s craft. The aggressor, having just struck another human being, must for a moment step outside the character to wonder whether damage was done. The victim, anticipating pain, often puts on a mask of stoic endurance long before the slap arrives. Timing suffers because actors become “slap-shy” after a few rehearsals, reacting before the hand has even begun to move.
And when the blow does land, the reaction we see is the actor’s body dealing with pain, not the character’s response to betrayal, insult, or passion. The illusion collapses. It is not acting; it is the equivalent of smearing onion juice on your cheek to force tears. It may look similar from a distance, but it is the wrong thing entirely.
“But It Looks Better!”
Directors sometimes argue that only a real slap looks convincing. They are right about one thing: faking it is hard. It requires rehearsal, repetition, and more rehearsal still. But that is the work. That is the craft. And it is what keeps actors safe. If you can convince an audience that someone has been struck with a baseball bat, then surely you can convince them of a simple slap.
Actors sometimes say, “Just go ahead and slap me — it’ll keep me in the moment and it will look better.” Odd how that offer is never made when the weapon is a crowbar. If the larger violence can be simulated, so can the smaller.
For my part, I will not work for a director who insists on contact face slaps. You should not either.
* * * *
The Simulation
Now, let’s get to the simulation. A real slap to the face, especially as written in most Western plays, comes as much of a surprise to the aggressor as it does to the victim, so in the simulation we need to remove any hint of premeditation. So there isn’t going to be much of a wind-up nor follow through. If anything, the body and even the rest of the arm will stay neutral and the slapping hand will look as though it had a life of its own from the wrist outward. Let’s try a difficult slap first, and that’s with the aggressor’s back to the audience.
Set-up: As the victim crosses slightly upstage, the aggressor uses the fingers of the left hand to touch the shoulder, stopping the victim from continuing, by happenstance stopping directly upstage of the aggressor. This is a small movement that can happen several lines before the slap, for it merely establishes distance. We can call this the “pre” set-up. Once the left hand is no longer seen by the audience, it can move to its target position – right in front of and against the solar plexus, palm turned up at about 45 degrees.
Picture: On the cue for the slap, the right elbow stays tucked against the body as the right hand flies up almost to ear height. Don’t short change this step, because there is no body English that goes along with this simulation. You must give the audience a brief look at the back of the hand or they won’t register the slap that is to come. But the elbow must not move.
Action: The hand, and only the hand, moves quickly here from right ear to left ear. Along the way, as it disappears from view, it scoops down to the target hand, makes contact with a light slapping sound, and then continues to its final position. Think of slapping water out of a bowl being held by the left hand, and throwing the water over your left shoulder. Do not move either elbow, don’t move your body, and you don’t need to move the target hand either. This is a tiny little movement; not an action that has the force to drive someone through a wall, but just enough to turn the face slightly.
ASM’s view, self slip-hand knap. Notice how far the victim is from the action.
audience view of same
Reaction: The aggressor must show the audience the fingertips of the right hand over the left shoulder for just a brief second, and the left hand must simply appear down by the left side. We want the audience to think that it was there the whole time, that way they won’t think that it was part of the action. Again, eliminate all movement except for that of the slapping hand. The victim must wait until he hears the slap sound before moving the face.
No matter what the relationship was between the two characters, once a slap has occurred it means that the world of these people has changed forever. One person has decided that words alone cannot express emotion, and that violence – the specific intent to cause physical pain – was the only remedy. There is no ignoring the transgression. The characters may make up afterwards, but the damage to the relationship will be there forever. Both characters know it, the audience knows it, and that is why the damage is far greater than the act. The audience now needs to know what will happen next – where will the relationship go? – and so they will look at the victim’s eyes for help. That is where your focus should be as well. The slap is over in a second; the emotional scar may last a lifetime.
I said that this simulation is the most difficult, so if you master it, everything else is a piece of cake. An easier version is to reverse positions, having the victim step slightly downstage and then turn his back to the audience. Now he can clap his own hands together, or even just use one hand to slap his chest, although the chest slap is a deader sound, so I prefer that the victim simply clap his hands. This one must be a slip-hand knap, with one hand held stationary as a target and the other traveling in a straight line from down by the hip to the target hand to the “struck” cheek as part of the reaction. The aggressor can stand a little further back and his hand need not dip so low, although I still like the fingertips to scoop underneath chin level so that the victim knows he has nothing to fear. In any case, the slapping hand need never get any closer to the victim than halfway between the two actors.
A more aggressive slap, audience view, shared slip-hand knap. Notice how the elbow starts away from the body, suggesting more premeditation.
As both actors feel more secure in the knowledge that they can’t hurt each other, the director can keep making adjustments to make sure that the audience is fooled by this illusion. As everyone masters these techniques, slowly turn out the relative placement of the actors. Instead of one being full back to the audience, try moving them so one is three quarters front and the other is one quarter front. The body placement will have to change slightly, and the path which the arm takes may need to change as well, but it is possible to open this simulation up quite a bit, especially if the actors are in motion slightly just before the set-up.
This kind of simulation can be a pain to work through, but it is definitely worth the effort. I have yet to find a circumstance in which there was no alternative to actual contact. To give you an idea, I once choreographed the fight scenes for a theatre-in-the-round production of Macbeth, and in this production for some reason a general slapped a soldier in the face. The actors were surrounded by the audience so there was no hand that could disappear from view, and we couldn’t provide the usual cheat of doing an off-stage noise. We finally worked it so that when the soldier finished his line the general stood for a moment in livid silence and then turned slightly away, as if the soldier was off the hook. Just as the soldier relaxed with a sigh of relief, the general suddenly turned back and savagely struck him. The soldier instantly raised his hand to the side of the face, and the general let his own hand hang in the air at face level. The audience heard the slap, and they were sure that they had seen the soldier’s face brutally struck. But the actor had merely been slapped on the shoulder. So long as the actors believed the illusion, the audience did as well, because they were given the right picture before and after the sound.
* * * *
Acting the Aftermath
A slap is never a trivial event. Once it has happened, the world of those characters is altered forever. One person has decided that words are no longer enough, and that only pain will serve. The damage to the relationship may be patched over, but it cannot be erased. The audience knows this, and they look to the victim’s eyes to see what happens next. That is the true acting challenge. The slap itself is over in a second; the scar it leaves is what lingers.
Final Word
When I began in this business, I too was told to give and take the real slap. Times have changed, and so has our knowledge. A new generation of choreographers has shown that non-contact methods can be both safe and utterly convincing.
I would turn an old phrase around: if you cannot find an alternative to actually hitting another actor, then you have no business staging a fight at all. And no business in this business.
Richard Pallaziol
Selected References
- Bailes, J. E., & Petraglia, A. L. (2019). Subconcussive impacts in sports: A growing concern. Neurosurgery, 85(5), 909–913.
- Meaney, D. F., & Smith, D. H. (2011). Biomechanics of concussion. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 30(1), 19–31.
- Wilson, M. H., et al. (2023). Neurological injury in slap fighting: An observational study. Frontiers in Neurology, 14, 115702.
- McCready, R. J., & Hyde, J. E. (1987). Sudden hearing loss after a slap injury: Case report. Journal of Laryngology & Otology, 101(3), 308–310.
- McKee, A. C., et al. (2016). The spectrum of disease in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Brain, 139(3), 922–933.