An acting student rehearses a scene at the National Fight Director Training Progam in Maine.

A couple of years ago, fight master J. Allen Suddeth was choreographing a fight scene with an actor who asked him to take it easy on his back. When Suddeth asked why, the actor explained that many years ago, while performing a battle scene in a Shakespeare play, another actor (who was involved in a separate brawl behind him) finished his fight early. At a loss for what to do next, he decided it would be a good idea to hit this particular actor in the back with a baseball bat. The man was laid up for three years with four broken vertebrae. When Suddeth asked who the fight director was for the show, the actor replied, "there was no fight director."

These days, the importance of having a qualified fight director on hand to choreograph and rehearse stage combat has grown. From opera to Broadway to regional theaters, fight scenes that aren’t carefully choreographed and actors who aren’t trained can result in chaos onstage. The Society of American Fight Directors is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to "promoting safety and fostering excellence in the art of directing staged combat/theatrical violence," according to its website. Two annual workshops sponsored by the SAFD, held each summer in South Paris, Maine and Las Vegas, Nevada, aim to do just that.

The Barn
Eleven years ago, Suddeth, author of Fight Directing For The Theatre, co-founded the National Fight Director Training Program at the Celebration Barn in southwestern Maine. "When I came up through the ranks, there was nowhere for me to study and no books I could read," recalls Suddeth, who’s worked as a fight director for the past 25 years and is one of 10 recognized fight masters in the U.S. "Although there were training programs that taught actors the techniques of fighting, there wasn’t any kind of codification or training for fight directors."

In June, 16 actors and eight fight directors were invited to study two weeks’ worth of intensive stage combat at the Celebration Barn, a renovated barn equipped with performance space, rehearsal space, a kitchen and dormitories, surrounded by rolling hills and farmland. With no television, radio or cell phone reception, the group spent the time hard at work and happily cut off from the rest of the world.

Two fight workshops occur simultaneously at the Barn, one for actors, the other for fight directors. Every morning, six days a week, the groups separate and take specialized classes. The actors, who vary in stage combat skill level from beginner to experienced, work on subjects including vocal techniques, script analysis and fight skills, while the fight directors take classes like "Working Within A Director’s Concept," "Period Swordplay" and "Firearm Safety." After a quick break for lunch, the two groups get together and the action begins. A fight director teams up with a pair of actors; fight choreography for a scene is then taught and rehearsed. Although the workshops typically begin with a classic approach to a fight scene from a classical play, such as Macbeth, challenges are quickly added on: What if the director’s concept was to do a samurai Macbeth? Or a western or post-apocalyptic one? The fight directors and the actors are then required to adapt their approach accordingly.

The focus at the Barn is on the process, according to Suddeth. "You are challenged not to do the most complicated fights; you are challenged by the playwright," he says. "If you’re doing a scene from a Mamet play, can you direct a couple of actors and put a fight into the scene that’s appropriate for those actors in that play at that time?"

Fight director/actress Ricki Ravitts puts her training from the SAFD workshops to use in a production of Romeo And Juliet.

The scenes are performed and videotaped after dinner and the two groups separate for critique sessions. Ricki Ravitts, an actress and certified fight teacher, has attended both the actor and the fight director workshops at the Barn. With an endless braid of red hair looped down around her back and her deliberate manner, you’d never guess Ravitts had taken classes like "Contemporary Violence" and "Mass Battle Staging"—until she picks up a rapier and dagger and wields them as if they were extensions of her own arms. Ravitts has worked as a fight director across the country and believes that the workshops at the Barn are unique in that they reflect what fight directors face in professional jobs.

"Usually you’re happily surprised if any of the actors know which end of the sword to hold," says Ravitts. "At the Barn, I had one afternoon to stage a fight from Romeo And Juliet with a Romeo who was very experienced and an actress playing Tybalt [gender-blind casting is the norm] who had never held a sword before. But the point is to make the scene work and make her look good. It’s very exciting and satisfying when you work with someone who says ‘I can’t do this’ and they come out of rehearsal saying ‘Look what I just did!’"

Suddeth calls the Barn experience tremendous fun and hard work. Exhausted students and faculty straggle out of classes to enjoy lunches and dinners cooked on the premises by a local chef and served family style. One of the highlights at the end of the first week is a lobster dinner, cooked by students and staff, followed by a dance and a campfire. The workshops culminate in a public performance in the small proscenium theater, where the actors perform scenes ranging from Shakespeare to Sam Shepard, while the fight directors function as the crew and work backstage. Tuition (which includes room and board) this past summer was $1,500 for the fight directors’ workshop and $1,100 for the actors’ workshop. Discounts are available for early registration and to SAFD members.

National Stage Combat Workshop
Where the focus at the Barn is on the creative process, fight technique takes precedence at the National Stage Combat Workshop, now in its 23rd year. This past July, in the gorgeous albeit sweltering setting of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 37 beginners and 16 advanced stage combat students met for three weeks. They rehearsed in whatever space was available—whether theater lobby, black box or dance studio—and stayed in dorms. As with Barn’s program, the Las Vegas workshop is divided into two categories. The Actor Combatant Workshop (ACW) provides a foundation in the skills of combat, including classes in single sword, unarmed combat and broadsword, while the Advanced Actor Combatant Workshop (AACW) provides special training for participants with advanced skills in stage combat. Classes take up eight to nine hours of each day, six days a week. Days off are spent catching up on mundane chores like laundry or taking a road trip to Utah and camping out. Tuition for the ACW this past summer was $1,350 and the AACW cost $1,450 (discounts are available for members of AEA, SAG, AFTRA and SAFD). Housing was an extra $420.

SAFD Fight Master J. Allen Suddeth makes a point about theatrical swordplay at the NSCW.

"The classes are emotionally, physically and intellectually challenging," says Ravitts, who has attended the Las Vegas workshop six times. "You just have to survive it." Students typically take skills proficiency tests at the end of the workshop. Every third year, a teacher certification program is added, that is perhaps best described as the "Ironman of stage combat." Students working towards teacher certification take advanced training in eight different disciplines (rapier and dagger, broadsword, broadsword and shield, knife, quarterstaff, small sword, single sword and unarmed), sit through a four-hour written test and choreograph and perform in 16 fights. "It’s brutal mentally and it’s brutal physically," says Suddeth, "but we want to try to create the highest standard we can."

Although they take place in vastly different settings, the SAFD workshops at the Barn and in Las Vegas have a common theme: staging a fight effectively and safely. The fight has to further the story, look realistic, exciting and dangerous, yet keep everyone safe. Suddeth knows from experience the challenges fight directors face when dealing with limited rehearsals and inexperienced actors. The workshops give actors and fight directors a chance to develop skills that will heighten a performance without unexpected consequences, such as an actor falling into the orchestra pit or losing an eye to a sword. "Safety, safety safety," says Suddeth. "Every minute of every day in every class with every student."

For more information about the two workshops, visit the SAFD website at www.safd.org.


Romeo And Juliet photo courtesy of Ricki Ravitts. All other photos courtesy of SAFD.