Stage Combat & Fight Direction

Fight instructor Jamie Macpherson addresses objections to teaching stage combat to young people.

Fight director Michael Jerome Johnson lays out how and when to hire a fight director.

We usually consider a fight choreographer’s job to be staging the fights so that they are safe. Certainly safety is essential: actors should not be getting hurt in the exercise of their art. But a violence designer is far more than a mere “safety foreman.” Like any other artist working in the theater, the violence designer’s primary role is doing interpretive work: making choices that help tell the story. Not the story of Hamlet, but the story of this Hamlet: that is to say, the story that this production of Hamlet is telling.

Stage combat is the art of creating the illusion of violence for the sake of storytelling. Some illusions are easier and/or less expensive than others. One thing I’ve found myself saying many times is that the difference between one character pulling a knife on another versus breaking a bottle and threatening to attack them with the broken base is hundreds of dollars.

What Playwrights and Dramaturgs Need to Know About Staging Violence. These two articles are based on a workshop I’ve taught at venues that include ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education), Region I KC/ACTF (Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival) , The Last Frontier Theatre Conference, and other organizations. The idea for it was based both in the experience of fight directing premieres of new plays and from my own experiences in the classroom during my MFA in playwriting.

Kyna Hamill interviews Casey Kaleba—a certified fight instructor with Society of American Fight Directors and blood expert—about the secrets to using blood in production.

We all love a good fight (in a show). A reminder to keep things real by checking in with actors and their weapons, maintain a full fight call, and maintaining consistent order.

Meron Langsner compares his knowledge of the sports combat and stage combat to better articulate the purposes of stage combat.  

Dramatically motivated fight choreography makes the audience lean forward in their seats. “Fightaturgy” matters.  

Meron Langsner shares insight into the difficulty and importance of creating a successful combat scene.