I know that many high school teachers are always leery of the fight scenes in Shakespeare plays, but we all know that you can get a lot more guys to audition if they know there’s a chance to sling some steel. Interestingly, sword fights are usually safer than unarmed scuffles. The actors are further apart, and the weapons themselves generate a certain level of fear and respect that just isn’t there when two actors tussle hand-to-hand. Nonetheless, accidents with swords occur, and when they do the injuries can be severe. And I hear way too many horror stories about well-meaning amateurs without experience (and a few too many professionals) telling the actors to really go after each other in order to make the fight look more exciting, The stories always end with broken blades and damaged actors.
For a YouTube video on the basics, follow this link.
The good news? The techniques used to make the fights safer are the same ones used to make the fight more believable, so art never needs to trump safety. These techniques form a solid basis for choreographed fights with the broadsword or rapier, and we can also use them for all kinds of weapons combat. [There are other forms of stage combat that specifically replicate the civilian fighting style of the 18th and 19th centuries, that of the dueling smallsword. Because smallsword techniques include thrusts directly aimed at the torso, and parries that keep the point on-line as a continuing threat to the opponent, they are by their nature more dangerous than the standard combat moves, so they will not be discussed in this volume. They should only be used under the direct training and supervision of a very experienced fight instructor.]
Before we get to specifics, let’s go over the nine commandments of stage combat with swords :
1. There must never be even a fraction of a second in which any weapon is pointed at or crosses in front of anyone’s face under any circumstance – before, during or after the fight.
2. Don’t force your partner to block your weapon on your attack. If she is supposed to block your incoming thrust to just outside of her left hip, then simply make sure that your target is two inches outside of her left hip when you begin the attack. Always thrust and cut “off-line”.
3. Conversely, don’t force the block, pushing your partner’s sword away. Simply meet the incoming sword at the prearranged point in space. Blades “kiss” on contact; they must never bash.
4. Always parry (block) with the edge of the blade, never with the flat.
5. Use gloves. It can mean the difference between a bruised finger or an infected and broken finger. Make sure everyone’s tetanus vaccination is up-to-date.
6. Finish your attacks with a straight arm. Don’t pull your cuts – push them.
7. Look at what you want to hit. We are built to do that automatically. DO NOT STARE AT YOUR PARTNER’S EYES! You will only end up losing track of your own sword. Follow the sword tips if you want to develop control of your sword.
8. A rule of thumb: actors should have one hour of fight rehearsal time for each five seconds of finished fight. Any techniques not polished before going into tech week must be cut from the fight.
9. Only stage combat fight-grade weaponry must be used for the fight.
I want to explain all of those commandments, so I’m going to repeat them and expand on them (it won’t kill you to re-read them).
1. There must never be even a fraction of a second in which any weapon is pointed at or crosses in front of anyone’s face under any circumstance – before, during or after the fight.
Back in 1974 at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, they were working on their original mounting of Cyrano De Bergerac, starring Peter Donat, with the brilliant J. Steven White not only providing the choreography but also playing the role of Valvert. The fight was very exciting, and with such an experienced choreographer was also very safe. As you may know, just before the duel is a bit of back-and-forth insulting between the two. For this production Cyrano menaced Valvert physically, at one point slowly walking forward and twirling the tip of the sword in front of Valvert’s face, but with that tip at a still safe distance of three feet away from Valvert.
During either the first or second dress rehearsal the heel of Cyrano’s right boot broke off right during that little twirl. Since it happened just as he was putting his weight on the foot, it naturally threw him off balance, pitching him forward. He instinctively extended his arms as we all do when we feel that we are going to fall. Unfortunately, this also pitched his sword forward along with his body, and the tip of the epee blade struck Valvert directly beneath the right eye, under the ridge of the cheek bone, piercing the skin, bending the sword and pushing Valvert’s head back. One inch higher and that sword tip would have entered the eye socket. Steven would have lost an eye and very likely his life had the blade entered the brain. I’ll repeat: this was before the stage fight had begun and the actors were far apart from each other.
After that incident, Mr. White incorporated a new rule: Never point or allow a weapon to cross in front of anyone’s face at any time. Anywhere. For any reason. You should implement this policy as well, starting today. It costs you nothing, takes nothing away, and will prevent injuries and save lives.
2. Don’t force your partner to block your weapon on your attack. If he is supposed to block your incoming thrust to just outside of his left hip, then simply make sure that your target is two inches outside of his left hip when you begin the attack. Always thrust and cut “off-line”.
We’re trying to create the illusion that a strike was intended to be deadly, but was deftly parried out of the way at the very last second. On the other hand, there is no reason to actually put your partner in danger. So always send the energy of the attack to that spot in space where a successful defense would end up redirecting the attacking tip. Should your partner forget what the next move of the fight is (it happens) no one will be hurt.
3. Conversely, don’t force the block, pushing your partner’s sword away. Simply meet the incoming sword at the prearranged point in space. Blades “kiss” on contact; they must never bash.
There are three really good reasons why actors and directors should heed this point. First: straight-arming the block puts too much pressure on the blades and leads to early breakage. Second: it is confusing to the audience, which sees any straight arm as an attack, not a defense. Third: pushing the attacking sword away from the body further than is necessary leads the partner to start attacking far away from the defender, which soon leads to a non-threatening and boring fight.
4. Always parry (block) with the edge of the blade, never with the flat.
Those who say otherwise are wrong. Swords are built so as to handle great stress when leading with the edge, but not at all for lateral stress. Think for a moment on how you would try to break a blade without using any tools. You’d more than likely try to bend it over your knee, right? And you would bend it along the flat because it is impossible to bend any other way. Well, blocking with the flat of the blade is doing much the same thing. The slight bending that the blade goes through with every block stresses the steel every time, leading to more and more microfractures until it finally breaks completely. Blocking with the edge doesn’t mean that a sword won’t break – it’ll just take years longer.
5. Use gloves. It can mean the difference between a bruised finger or an infected and broken finger. Make sure everyone’s tetanus vaccination is up-to-date.
Little scratches can lead to big infections. That’s a good enough reason to use gloves, but another is simple sword control. During a fight, the handle can slightly pinch the skin of your palm on occasion. It’s not much, but it can be a distraction at a critical moment, even leading to an unintended disarm.
6. Finish your attacks with a straight arm. Don’t “pull” your cuts – push them.
Every attack should be obvious to the audience, so show them that you really intend to strike your opponent. Don’t just hack at the air in front of your partner- fully reach for your target. After all, if you are truly engaged in the struggle, you will naturally try to get as much distance as you can, so the arm will be perfectly straight as you attack, with the sword being an extension of your arm. Push the tip, even on cutting motions, all the way to your target.
By the way, the actor/combatant’s job in targeting is difficult and a little schizophrenic. The “actor” has to sell his character’s intended target as being some lethal spot on his opponent’s body. Meanwhile, the “combatant” has to guide his sword to the true target, which is that safe point away from his partner.
7. Look at what you want to hit. We are built to do that automatically. DO NOT STARE AT YOUR PARTNER’S EYES! You will only end up losing track of your own sword. Follow the sword tips if you want to develop control of your sword.
Audiences have a tough time following a sword fight, so you need to help them . Indicate the meaning of each move by following the tips of the swords with your focus and body English. If you believe that the tip of the sword is deadly, the audience will believe it. And it helps the fight not a bit if your intention is to strike a generic target such as “the upper torso” or “left hip”. Really focus on the exact square inch that is your planned target. Sloppy targeting leads to sloppy swordplay.
8. A rule of thumb: actors should have one hour of fight rehearsal time for each five seconds of finished fight. Any techniques not polished before going into tech week must be cut from the fight.
Rehearsing a fight is not just memorizing moves. The fight has to be so ingrained in the body that it becomes second nature. When the body performs the fight from muscle memory, the moves come out automatically, and only then is the brain free to concentrate on the acting. We know that the same is true for learning your lines: you’re not really acting if you are trying to perform while at the same time consciously working on coming up with your next line. The difference with stage combat is that an unpolished fight not only detracts from the show, but is also unsafe.
9. Only stage combat fight-grade weaponry must be used for the fight.
“If weapons can be so dangerous, shouldn’t we stay away from steel? What about plastic swords, or wood or rubber?”
Tempered steel is safer than any alternative. Think about it. The reason you want tempered steel is because it is less likely to break when someone is bashing away at you. Plastic and wood break more easily than steel, but they are stiff materials nonetheless, so when they break they leave the actor with a very sharp and unforgiving instrument in hand, quite capable of going through the human body.
There are certainly fights in which wooden clubs are used. There are also a number of “wasters” sold these days – wooden sword replicas meant to be used as practice broadswords. But I dislike actors being given one weapon with which to practice and another for performance. Wooden swords have very different movement and balance characteristics than steel swords, and actors who train with wood tend to strike much harder and fail to develop good (read “safe”) technique.
Rubber is impractical for a sword fight. If made too floppy it just looks ridiculous, and to make it stiff it has to be as thick as a club. Only tempered steel or the more rare and costly tempered aluminum should be used for stage combat, keeping in mind that they can break as well. If that makes you uneasy, cut the fight scenes.
“Oh, but in this show, the actors aren’t really fighting: they only strike the swords once or twice.”
Ok, but that’s kind of like saying that brakes on a car aren’t important when you drive because you plan on going forward 99% of the time. However true that may be, when you need the brakes, YOU REALLY NEED THEM. Well, striking with costume swords is like driving a car without brakes – yes, you can do it, but it’s really dangerous. If a sword must strike another or must be dropped to the ground, you need it be as sturdy as possible, and that means both fight-grade construction and tempered steel.
Whether fight worthy or not, there are also some very basic safety issues that have to be brought to the attention of actors whenever they are handed a sword. These are things which seem so obvious as to be unnecessary to even mention, and yet that is exactly why you must. There will always be one actor who will do the unthinkable, and it is an innocent who will get injured.
1] Don’t touch the blade of the sword with an ungloved hand unless told to do so. Skin has oils that contain natural salts. Those salts attract water vapor, and that water leads to rust.
2] Don’t walk around with the sword resting on your shoulder. One little turn in the wrong direction and the tip will go into someone’s face.
3] When walking on level ground, keep the sword tip in sight as you move, especially backstage. The safest way to walk with the sword is to hold it in front of you in an underhand grip, tip pointing towards the floor.
4] When going up a flight of stairs, let the tip drag behind you so it doesn’t get jammed on the next step.
5] When going down a flight of stairs, try to turn the sword so that the blade crosses behind you. You want to avoid the tip pointing behind you and at someone closing in on you.
6] Don’t play with the swords. They are props used to aid a theatrical production, not to help you pretend to be Robin Hood backstage.
7] For outdoor theatres, don’t stick the tip into the ground and don’t lay the sword on grass. Rust happens.
8) In indoor theatres, be careful of where you leave the sword between use. A sword laid on a chair will be sat on, and left on the floor will be kicked.
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Stage combat sword play is best defined as exaggerated “double-time” fencing. No, it doesn’t mean fighting twice as fast. Double-time in swordwork means that every attack is first fully defended against in some way before a return attack is launched. Completely block before you attack. This is the way most people have fought throughout history, with a couple of exceptions. Both traditional Japanese swordplay and Western dueling from the 1700’s through to today’s Olympic style fencing is largely single-time. In defending against an attack, not only is the incoming sword deflected away but a return attack is initiated in almost the same motion. One motion – single time. This much faster style, instead of block and then attack, is sometimes described from the French as parry and riposte. But parry-riposte puts the actors in more danger, and is very hard for the audience to follow. For almost all stage and film purposes double-time fencing rather than single-time is used.
I’ll repeat the following many times in this book: actors learn fight moves the same way they learn their lines – one at a time. But actors must perform movement the same way they perform their lines – in natural varied rhythms. You can stretch out or speed up your timing, or even overlap some of the lines, but you can’t eliminate some words just to get to the end of the sentence faster. The same goes with the individual moves that make up a simulation.
A great analogy for swordwork is tap dancing. At first you have to learn how to do the steps, then practice so that the body performs without consciously thinking about every little movement. But it’s not dancing until you have enough control to bring out all of the music inherent in the dance. If you are just tap, tap, tapping away you are monotonously beating out a rhythm without drawing out all of the tension, excitement and beauty that lives within the dance. Ten different dancers will perform the same routine in ten different ways, each in accord with his or her artistry, expertise, and personality. But each dancer must perform all of the moves correctly. You can never dump some of the moves because they get in the way of your emotional response.
One more analogy, and then we’ll get to work. Point and click. Everyone now knows that in order to work a computer mouse you need to drag the cursor to the correct spot and then left or right click. Unless you have moved the cursor to exactly the right spot on the screen it doesn’t matter how well or how fast you can click the mouse. Some people seem to fly across the screen and are able to jump from page to page and can cut, copy and paste with dramatic speed, but that speed comes only as fast as they can first precisely hit the mark and then click.
Sword play is exactly the same, except that it takes two people working together to make each move. Every attack must visibly develop before the defense can begin. Point, then click. Fights can go fast or slow, but the sequence of point then click, attack then defense, must be maintained. More complicated timing moves, such as riposte/counter attacks, simultaneous attacks, etc., will not be covered here, if for no other reason than it is confusing to the audience. So no matter how real such occurrences may be in an actual fight, if they cannot be clearly conveyed to the audience they only serve to interrupt the story you are trying to tell. (I’m overstating the case here just a bit – I have included both actions in a few of my fights, but only with actors who already had a good amount of experience with stage fighting and were excellent actors, able to convey a physical intention before even moving their weapon. A very rare trait.)
* * * * *
The same acronyms we learned for unarmed fighting can be used for weapon combat:
V – The victim (in swordplay we’ll call him the defender) establishes control by making eye contact before the aggressor begins the simulation, and also by simply stepping back or away from the fight if something doesn’t feel right.
I – The interactive flow of energy must follow reality. The force of the block must match the force of the attack. The defender responds to the aggressor’s attack, not simply sticks up a parry at the same time as the attack. This timing of attack then defense must be established from the earliest rehearsal. Otherwise you get that all too common look of “E.S.P. fighting” the attack and defense occurring at the same moment. Remember – point, then click.
N – Only non-contact techniques must be used. Believe it or not, even with broadswords in their hands some actors have to be reminded of this.
O – The swords can give the illusion of being aimed at the opponent while never actually putting the other actor in any danger. When the energy of the sword moves off-line, a defender who forgets a move still won’t get hurt.
The other acronym works just as well:
S – The set-up happens before any attack. Eye-contact is established to make sure that both actors are ready and at the correct distance.
P – The picture is what we want the audience to believe is about to happen. Show that little bit of prep which indicates that a thrust or a cut is about to come in, and look at the intended target. Let the audience see the danger first so they have a chance to emotionally respond to it.
A – The action is the thrust or cut itself, and must be performed smoothly. Actions unfold so that the audience can see the danger threatening the defender.
R – Finally, the part that nails the simulation is the reaction by the defender, usually a block or parry or evasion. By contrast to the action, this is a sudden movement, performed when the action is 95% developed. If the block is executed too early there is no dramatic tension, no chance for the audience to feel afraid for the character. Point and click. The aggressive attacking action is the “point”; the defensive blocking reaction is the “click”.
For swordplay we add one more acronym – BLED – borrowed and modified from the London School of Drama.
B – balance includes keeping your heels on the ground and not leaning over as you attack. A wide and deep stance is preferred. The head rests on the torso, free of tension, and the torso rests on the hips. No need to lean forward nor stick the buttocks out.
Take a look at this series of moves. I didn’t plan these – the fighter was merely blowing off some steam during our photo shoot and we started to spar for real:
I’m the slow guy on the left. Notice how he moves in close, launches his attack (it was actually a blazing flurry of punches) and then moves out of distance – all without losing his balance. His head, chest and hips were never moved beyond the level of his knees, so his center of balance was always under his control. Whether advancing or retreating, the feet move first and then the upper body moves as a unit to the new secure spot.
If you want to make a fighter appear untrained, such as in Twelfth Night, think of doing the opposite – lean the torso out over the knees, stick the rear end out when retreating, that sort of thing. But naturally you must excise those postures from your actors if you want the audience to believe that they are real fighters.
L – The audience has a great deal of difficulty in focusing on the sword. It usually disappears from their view as soon as the fight starts, so they follow the fight by watching the changes in body line as it shifts throughout the fight. Line expresses intention – long and straight when attacking, short and bent when in defense. And not just with the arms, but with the legs and torso as well.
E – The eyes are busy in a fight – looking at your partner’s tip when he is attacking – looking at your intended target when you attack – and always checking the room and your partner for safety.
D – Crucial to the audience’s willingness to accept the reality of your fight is the distance between the combatants. The closer the combatants are the less dangerous the fight appears. Maintain distance so that the thrust sword tip is at least four inches away from the defender. Actor combatants are invariably too close to each other as they fight. If you are watching any fight rehearsal at any level of experience, you can yell out “too close” at any arbitrary moment, and you will always be right.
I’ve repeated this before in this book, and here it is again: actors learn movement the same way they learn their lines – one at a time. But actors must perform movement the same way they perform their lines – in natural varieted rhythms. You can stretch out or speed up your timing, or even overlap some of the lines, but you can’t eliminate some words just to get to the end of the sentence faster. The same goes with the individual moves that make up a simulation.
Now let’s get to work, starting with the basics.