Understanding Stage Combat

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

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

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

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.

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

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.