A fight call is a short rehearsal of all of the fights in a show. It takes place just before every technical rehearsal and performance starting with first tech and continuing all the way through to closing night. If your show has a fight, you must run a nightly pre-show fight call. Of course it would be wonderful if this could happen starting well before first tech. I for one would love to see a fight call schedule for every single rehearsal starting the day after the fighters are first given the choreography, but I know that isn’t realistic for most theatres. But certainly starting with first tech, the fight call must be incorporated into the call schedule. It doesn’t matter if the fight is only a couple of punches, you can’t short change this vital aspect of actor safety.
A fight call allows the actors an opportunity to get the moves of the fight back into muscle memory and to fix any of the little problems that may have cropped up during the prior performance. That’s all there is to it. For my money, there is no point in running the fights at full speed nor in slow motion. A simple light and quick walk-through of the fight is usually all that is necessary. If a particular issue needs to be addressed, the specific action should be worked through and then the entire fight run one more time, but that’s it. There is no benefit in exhausting the cast before the show. It’s analogous to a line speed-thru. It only takes about twenty minutes and it awakens the brain so that the actor is ready for performance.
Actors resent the fight call. They hate showing up early, and I don’t blame them. But since keeping the fight fresh can prevent serious injuries, all of the actors should know that anyone who fails to show up for fight call will be cut from the fights in that night’s performance. For that reason the fight call is run by the fight captain, but is set and called by the stage manager. Showing up on time is the only requirement that must be set in stone. Bring this up at the first company meeting, for anyone who cannot make the fight call should not be cast in a fight.
Beyond that, be flexible. You may need to work out a split call if there are many cast members and some have different make-up and costume calls, or you may need all of the fighters to arrive twenty minutes before the rest of the cast, or you may need to set the fight call for twenty minutes before curtain. The specifics don’t matter so long as a practical routine is set and then kept.
In some theatres the rigidity of fight call protocol can get a bit silly. Some places insist on the fight call taking place on the set, with all of the set dressing in place, and all of the actors in costume. Some also require every fight to be performed three times: once as a walk-through, then at half speed with lines, and finally at full performance speed. But why put everyone through all of that? The call can be performed nearly anywhere as long as there is enough room, and at some point you need to trust that the actors know what they are doing. They just need a quick chance to freshen up the fight and check the weapons for damage. Certainly there is no benefit to having them run the fights at performance speed.
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Before we get to the combat itself, there are some other aspects of teaching staged combat that should be addressed – the first being actors playing with violence off-stage. Actors are given the liberty to play as children while exploring their characters, but a lot of them also want to play with the fight techniques they are learning. The impulse to play is understandable, but really gets in the way of good rehearsing. For one thing, as soon as you start playing with stage combat, your body starts memorizing bad technique, so the super slow motions and mind-numbing repetition of careful fight rehearsals is really the only thing that will lead to a believable fight – and a safe one.
That being said, slow motion rehearsing is a tool that helps us get to performance, but we can’t confuse one for the other. In any art discipline we can’t show the audience that we have learned correct technique. We have to provide a believable illusion, to “hold the mirror up to nature”. So at some point the actors are going to have to bring the fight up to speed and give each simulation a look of real danger. Whether director or actor, never be satisfied that you have “taken care of the fight stuff.” Each simulation must be judged on safety and believability. If it doesn’t strike an audience as being true, it has no business being in your show.
A third concern is that some actors may simply not be comfortable around violent actions, and they can begin to lose the trust that they need to have in their partners. These actors are going to be very reticent about expressing their discomfort for fear of being seen as “wimps”, so please keep a weather eye out for them. If they are given a chance to approach the material slowly and in a spirit of exploration and sharing, with a little patience you’ll find that they can soon more than hold their own in even the most demanding fight scenes.
Another point that both directors and actors need to remember is that stage combat will never have the feel of action sequences in popular movies. I know that that’s sometimes a bitter pill to swallow, especially after seeing breathtaking fights in such films as The Princess Bride, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Lord of the Rings. Stage actors want to re-create the cool moves they’ve seen, but we just can’t speed up the film when the actor gets tired, or show something at three different angles, or perform something twenty times in front of the camera and then keep the best move for the final cut, or edit out every time a weapon breaks, or bring in a stunt double, or take ten hours to film an entire fight in segments of only four moves at a time, or delay finishing a scene waiting for an actor to recuperate from a bruised knee, or change out a heavy steel sword for a plastic duplicate that weighs only a tenth of the first one and use it in the middle of a fight sequence, or pretend to fire a gun and add the sound and the flash in post-production.
Stage combat is an illusion that works only because we can control the placement of the audience and they have suspended disbelief. Playing with these actions outside of rehearsal really looks goofy to passersby, and adds to the reputation of immaturity with which the acting profession is already burdened. But there is a more important reason for not taking a stage fight outside of a theatre, which I call …
Yelling theatre in a crowded firehouse.
On occasion, theaters get the idea that in order to drum up interest in an upcoming show, a selected scene from a play should be performed in a public area with a lot of foot traffic. Not a bad thought – the public gets a taste of the quality of the performance and flyers can be passed out. And what better way to get the passing public’s attention than by staging a fight scene!
I have a great fear of having fights performed in a non-controlled, non-theatrical environment. The only circumstances under which I would feel even slightly less uneasy would be if the event were staged almost like a miniature theatre: a clearly defined playing area, controlled entrances and exits for the performers, a formal announcement explaining what the audience is about to see, large signs posted along every path leading into the area, and the actors visibly in costume. In other words, once you have taken every possible precaution to make it obvious that this is theatre — and in the process drained most of the spontaneity from the performance — the risk becomes only slightly more tolerable.
My concern is that the unsuspecting audience can react in fear, and for many that fear turns to action. The first response is to run, the second is to call 911, and for some the third response is to pull out their hidden pistol and start shooting. All of these things have happened. (I usually get the call from the local police department when my props were used in a demonstration that ended poorly.)
Sometimes, actors are arrested for endangering the public (on the idea that it should have been anticipated that at the very least one person won’t understand that it isn’t real, will run for an exit, trip, and sprain an ankle.) Less common, actors have been shot at. It doesn’t matter how extreme the costumes or exotic the weaponry. Real crazy people have attacked innocent others with samurai swords while in public places, so there is no reason to assume that everyone will automatically know that the violence you perform isn’t real.
If someone pulls a knife or sword in a public place, bystanders will assume that the threat is real. People do not stop to ask questions in that moment. The instinct is to react immediately, because hesitation can cost lives. An off-duty police officer faced with the same situation would be trained to stop the threat first and determine the circumstances afterward.
Finally, it is not pleasant but vitally important to keep one more thing in mind. Stage combat training does not mean that injuries will not occur. They will. Good training will lead to fewer injuries, but accidents will happen and actors will get hurt. If you are not comfortable with that, cut the fights from the show.