The Art of Unarmed Stage Combat

Robert Najarian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317804895
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Théâtre

The Art of Unarmed Stage Combat is a guide to the principles and techniques of theatrical violence, combining detailed discussions of the mechanics of stage fighting with the nuances of acting decisions to make fighting styles reflect character and story.

Expert Fight Director Robert Najarian offers never-before-published games and exercises that allows actors to develop the skills and concepts for performing violence for stage and screen. This title utilizes a unique system of training techniques that result in stage violence that is both physically engaging for the performer, while remaining viscerally engaging for the audience.

This book is written for the actor and fight director.

Part I
A Brief History of Violence in Performance

Chapter 1
Overview of Stage Combat History

Attempting to assemble much less find resources for a written history of stage combat or violence in performance is a difficult task. Locating books on the subject is not impossible but can pose some problems as those volumes are few and far between in the publishing. The reason for this is two-fold. First, the study of violence for the stage, its concepts, techniques, and tricks is such a niche part of the greater study of Theatre as a whole that the demand for such books is usually on the smaller side. Second, since the need to actually perform these techniques is primarily a physical skill there is little substitute for being in the same room with the person teaching or choreographing the moves and those performing them. As such the tradition of learning stage combat closely followed both its martial and theatrical roots. Information about the skills and techniques used by master instructors and performers was largely handed down orally through an in-person, teacher/student interaction either within a theatre company or a certain school of martial arts. On the rare occasion some written record of a system or methodology would be written down but typically this would be a document that was for internal use only. These techniques and methodologies were often considered to be trade secrets. The popularity and economic longevity of a theater or a school would depend on the ability for theatre companies and martial arts instructors to attract and retain audiences or students based on the efficacy and unique nature of what they had to offer.

If we were to start with the advent of Western Drama we would have to take a look at the Classical World and the roots of western performance and drama with the Greeks. The written material that endures from that time in both dramatic and historical literature bears out a similar narrative. The dramatic tales from the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides chronicle the bloody episodes between city-states, nations, and even families in ancient Greece. With violence being seemingly commonplace in the Classical World one may think that there would be plenty of work for a fight director in those days especially considering most male citizens then were also warriors for their respective city-states.

However, one pass at only a few plays from that time quickly demonstrates exactly the opposite. With some notable exceptions, the act of violence is never shown to the audience. Rather, violent acts occur off-stage, are out of sight of the audience and typically reported by characters through narrative after the fact. The hanging of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus by his own hand are told by Creon upon his return. The cries of Agamemnon are projected on-stage as he is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus and are heard by the chorus who frantically consider what is to be done. The death of Hippolytus, son of Theseus, by a sea monster sent by Poseidon is recounted in gloriously poetic detail mere moments after his death. In only a few instances act of violent suffering or death take place for the audience to witness. One such moment that Sophocles has in view of the audience is the suicide of Ajax after he is shamed by his madness and impales himself on his own sword. Another appears in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound where the titular character is shown to be lashed to the rock where his liver is eaten daily by an eagle only to be regenerated again at night because of his immortality.

These latter two examples are exceptions, however, which prove the rule that the origins of Western drama did not overly concern itself with realistic representations of physical violence on stage. There are many theories as to why this may have been the case, both cultural and practical. It may have been a religious observance that even the mimicry of violence and death in a venue witnessed by others was the provenance of a religious ceremony only and forbidden in any other instance. Also, if we are to believe the stories of Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides, the lives of the ancients were fraught with the constant threat of war, personal peril on an almost daily basis, and the harshness of their environment. As such, it may have been a practice to not depict such physical suffering on stage because the members of the audience were so bombarded by it in their lives. The theatre provided the catharsis on an emotional level without the shock of having to witness actual pain and suffering because it was so omnipresent in the world. Or it could have simply been a matter of practical means, or lack thereof. Perhaps the limits of stagecraft in the Classical World were not enough to support the actual mimicking of death believably enough in front of an audience. Since the Greeks seemed so concerned with the emotional effect of dramatic work perhaps they knew that any attempt to represent death or violence on stage would invariably come up short, thereby breaking the spell cast by the players over the audience and reducing the impact of the catharsis. It would seem that the act of catharsis so central to the art of performance was to be achieved primarily through the act of speaking, storytelling, and the shared word.

This final supposition is of particular interest since one of the main reasons why violence can be so unsatisfying in a dramatic setting is because the physical properties to execute such a grand trick are usually not ideal. We might intellectualize the reason and say the seminal practice of the Greeks of separating what could be represented or mimicked on stage through memesis and what could be used as part of the narrative through diegesis had far-reaching effects throughout the practice of Western theatre into the contemporary plays of today. Often one will hear the sentiment that the horror that is unseen is more disturbing in the mind than it ever could be in actuality. As Albert Henrichs says in his article "Drama and Dromena: Bloodshed, Violence, and Sacrificial Metaphor in Euripides" about Greek tragedy:

the most extreme forms of tragic violence are presented as off-stage events, out of sight but very much within the emotional reach of the audience ... this prohibition of on-stage bloodshed, which reflects the impracticability of its re-enactment, had farreaching consequences for the representation of violence in tragedy.

(Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Vol. 100 (2000), 173–188)

This argument, while having its merits from an intellectual standpoint, is a bit of a cop-out when it comes to actually producing a play. The reason we put on plays is to give form to the formless. The play as written tells the story. The play as performed lives it. In addition, any individual whether a theater-goer or not can likely think of a moment in time where the act of witnessing an instance of violence was so horrible, so theretofore unimaginable, that the observer was forever changed after the fact.

More often than not the issue of whether or not to include a violent moment in a show is a matter of budget and funds since it is hard for an administrator to reconcile spending a high percentage of a show's budget simply on making it believable that people die. It then becomes a vicious cycle for the artist where there is no material support for practicing this part of the art, there is less time given to it in rehearsal, the artist does not get to practice it as much as he or she would like, and it becomes a lackluster skill. The cycle continues when theaters see that the artists have a lackluster skill in this particular area so then production companies are less inclined to encourage it. What happens in the end is that every moment of violence becomes a place-holder, a moment in the show where the director and actors cringe and sigh and grit their teeth to get through it so they can get back to telling the story of the rest of the play. The work becomes under-tempo and out of phase with the rest of the storytelling. Sometimes people try to approach the violence as a problem that needs to be solved only through stylization. This may work if the rest of the show is likewise stylized from a strong point of view. But the stylization of the violence will only be resonant if it is performed in a consistent style with the rest of the production. Anything else that is not carefully considered, well-rehearsed, skillfully performed, and conceptually integrated will seem disjointed and out of place. This is the burden of enacting violence on stage. The obstacles are great. But like any endeavor with a great obstacle, the rewards after overcoming such an obstacle can be considerable. It needs the desire, attitude, approach, training, and time to make it work.

The first real time we see a group of dedicated theatre artists pay particular attention to the role of violence in a dramatic setting is with the Elizabethans, particularly William Shakespeare. There exists documented, albeit disjointed history dating back to written accounts of English Masters of Defence (fencing masters) who used to share the same space with acting companies in London in the sixteenth century. The most notable use of space by the English Masters of Defence was at the Blackfriars Theatre in London where many of Shakespeare's plays were originally performed. Furthermore, the famous Elizabethan actor and clown, Richard Tarlton, who was a company member of Shakespeare's The Chamberlain's Men became a fencing master (Paul Menzer (2006) Inside Shakespeare. Essays on the Blackfriars Stage, Susquehanna University Press). Having an actor of such skill and popularity as Tarlton as part of the company would have been a great boon to a playwright like Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could write a comedic scene that required the deft skills of an actor who was an accomplished dancer, musician, prankster, and fencer he could include such a scene in the play with the confidence that Tarlton would do it justice. And perhaps if he could not play a particular part requiring these talents, then surely he had the skills to teach any actor taking on the part the necessary moves required to play the role.

The model of Richard Tarlton as the company member of many physical skills is an apt one for tracking the careers of many actors and fight directors who still practice and help others practice this part of the craft today. Many fight directors begin their path as performers, typically being taught a fight in a production where they were cast or learning theatrical combatives through a conservatory-style training program for young actors. Interest and aptitude usually prepare an individual for further training and work as an arranger, choreographer, coordinator, and designer of physical violence.

Of course, no skill can be developed and improved without a demand for that skill. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England there seemed to be demand for such skills because the playwrights and theater companies of the time produced work that included conflict through physical violence as a primary means of developing a story and giving the audience something exciting to expect in performance. The physical spectacle as well as the threat of violence became an important device to create expectation and hold the attention of the audience throughout the play.

The use of violence during the Elizabethan and Jacobean time seemed to revolve primarily around the use of bladed weapons, particularly swordplay involving the rapier, dagger, long-sword or a combination of weapons that Tarlton and company as well as their audience would have been familiar with if not in use than in recognizing as commonplace tools for personal protection. Most theater companies would have actors versed in what were known as the "standard combats." These were set pieces of choreography that could be inputted into just about any production where a fight was necessary for the purposes of the story. Sometimes these set pieces would even be used in performance when no fight was needed but rather for when the audience needed to be injected with some enthusiasm. The standard combats were considered a theatrical element to provide just such excitement to win back the wandering attention of an audience.

With the emergence of the cinema as a burgeoning industry in the United States in the early twentieth century there was a renewed interest in using swordplay to increase the appeal of the films being produced. The surge of interest came in the 1920s with the movies of Douglas Fairbanks who was the first director to employ a fencing master to assist a production of a fencing scene in cinema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_combat). Fencing had been popular for some time and was practiced by many in the United States and abroad as a means of exercise as well as a sport. Swordplay in film continued to be a popular device throughout the 30s and 40s as well, particularly with genre-defining films like The Prisoner of Zenda with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power, and the host of swashbuckling movies that featured either the magnetic Errol Flynn or the sometimes dastardly but always debonair Basil Rathbone. Any fisticuffs seen in these early films were usually limited to a single punch, slap, or some struggling over a weapon or object. The limits of this were predicated on the fact that there were really no experts in a system of hand-to-hand combat who were available to consult on such films. A few decades later, however, there would be a shift in the presence of skilled martial artists who were available to create such work.

After the Second World War, the displacement of many families from the East resulted in an influx of Asian immigrants to the West. With this influx came individuals looking to find work and start new businesses particularly on the West Coast of the United States where most immigrants would typically first land upon arrival. In addition to various professional skills, many of these families brought over their cultural and familial traditions that often included a lineage of passing down certain martial arts. Also US soldiers who had been stationed in Asia during the Second World War and had been exposed to martial systems in Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines had also returned home with a new perspective on physical combat as art. These veterans were eager to connect with those people who had immigrated to the US to continue studying what they had seen in the East. This combination of location, skill, and interest that was now present and so close to the film industry created conditions where US culture could explore a fascination with new forms of violence and conflict.

Recognizing that there was money to be made in this new fascination with exotic forms of violence among the public, movies of the late 60s and early 70s began to feature unarmed martial arts more prominently in films. This interest was particularly bolstered by the popularity of the films of Bruce Lee. The success of these films also led to a resurgence of films that featured swordplay such as The Three Musketeers, The Duellists, and even the original Star Wars. However, now there was a difference in the swordplay featured in the films of the 70s as opposed to those seen in the 40s. There had grown a grittier, more visceral quality to the fights. These fights featured more wrestling and fisticuffs in conjunction with the swordplay than ever before. This hybridization of unarmed fighting with classic swordplay with its roots in fencing stemmed from three factors. First, the success of the martial arts films at the time made it desirous for the productions to include unarmed violence, which at this point had become a bit more recognizable to audiences as opposed to the swordplay that seemed more of a period style unconnected with a modern audience. Second, among the artists who started to make their living staging sword fights for productions (particularly for the stage and who subsequently were hired for film work like the renowned British fight director William Hobbs) there was a movement away from the choreographic aesthetic of the classic, swashbuckling style of swordplay movements towards a style that more closely reflected the real-world fighting techniques that were taught by Masters of Defence, recorded in manuals, and used by practitioners of the fighting arts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Finally, a new crop of actors who were becoming popular in the business also favored this gravitation towards a new realism in the depiction of violence on stage and screen. Actors such as Harvey Keitel, Oliver Reed, and Robert DeNiro were blending a deep psychological realism with visceral physicality that needed to be supported by the violent movements in their performances. This new approach to treating all violence, whether with weapons or without, as integral to developing story and character started to take root in the artistry of creating these moments in performance.

The trend in having violence be a major component of performance in stage as well as film continues today. Contemporary playwrights such as Sam Shepard, Martin McDonagh, and Qui Nguyen utilize violence through physical conflict as a main vehicle for storytelling. Audiences have become more aware of this growing aspect to storytelling along with the stage and camera tricks to make violent interactions seem more "real." Now more than ever a careful and informed approach to depicting and performing violence is needed for both stage and film.

There are no new, untried approaches to depicting physical conflict and violence in theatrical settings that necessarily need to be developed. The classic techniques and training to be learned from the tradition of stage combat can be as effective as ever to help create the magic of theatre and film. All it takes is discipline, precision, and consistency. Solid technique, however, is not enough. All of the technical expertise in the world isn't worth a fig if it doesn't illuminate the human experience. Understanding the reasons behind conflict and imagining how a character responds to that specific conflict should always come first. Performers who are then interested in making this aspect of the work a part of their art on a consistent basis must be committed to more than just training the physical techniques...