I teach and choreograph stage violence—kicks, punches, falls, rudimentary wrestling and judo, sword fighting through the ages, the occasional beheading, nose- and hair-pulling, and slaps—and have done so professionally for 35 years, sometimes with students as young as 14.
I’m a hit with young actors. As we begin a workshop, I tell them I’m going to touch them, that I might put my hands on their shoulders to position them, or gently kick their foot so they assume a broader stance. They know, coming in, that there will be physical contact, but I always introduce my methods. Actors are allowed to opt out of any exercise. However, what I rarely see among young actors is peer pressure to perform. I see hesitation; I see enthusiasm. I see encouraging teachers who are often the first line of defense for young people navigating the issues of their age: bullying, questions of gender and sexuality, family violence, peer relationships, identity. The theater, perhaps more than any classroom, is where many students first test their willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Initially, the work of stage combat happens in a moral void: a punch without reason, slipping on a banana peel, slamming a head on a table. Fun stuff, if you ask the attendees. Lots of laughter, awkwardness, and learning to control movement. When a student lands a perfectly placed (and mimed) face-kick and the victim’s reaction sells the violence, I praise them. “That’s wonderful!” Everyone laughs because, let’s face it, violence can be hilarious. And harmless. Think Home Alone. Young people are so steeped in the myths and romance of violence that most of them don’t know what the real thing is. For that, I’m thankful. Of course, I have to think: What the hell am I teaching?
Recently, in a high school where I freelance, I was told I could no longer teach a contact face slap—one of the few bits of stage violence that is actually what it seems, albeit controlled and delivered in a way that is relatively painless. The school’s counselors had decided that this was a possible trigger and might make some students feel unsafe. I’ve always acknowledged this. I work with three primary principles: what’s physically safe for combatants and audience, what’s theatrically effective, and what the actor can bring to their performance with confidence. I always thought the contact face slap passed muster, based on these principles and how I teach.
I oftentimes have young actors slap me as part of my teaching, not because I’m tough or because I deserve my own medicine, but to remind myself of what they’re experiencing. I’m always surprised by them. I’m surprised by the contact, by the sound. I’m reminded each time of my vulnerability in allowing someone to strike me. And I’m grateful for how carefully they approach me. Most of them will tell you that slapping another person is more difficult than being slapped. Even with that, however, they can’t help but smile when they slap me.
The contact face slap is one of the most common, yet often flubbed bits of stage violence. This particular style of action, when called for in a scene, can be especially effective and intimate. The requirements of the actors involved are many: There must be proper physical spacing, the victim must allow the slap to happen, and the perpetrator must deliver the slap with confidence they will not cause harm. The victim’s reaction to a well-executed slap is natural; the audience’s reaction to a poorly executed slap is deflating.
I have had objections to other aspects of my work. Several years ago, I toured locally with a sword fight I’d choreographed for a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Audiences in several colleges, high schools, and middle schools were introduced to death by poetry. The fight is interlaced with Cyrano’s ballad, in which he tells his adversary how he will die. Then, as no surprise, Cyrano delivers the final, killing thrust. The fight is quite theatrical (apologies for the obvious), timed to the meaning and rhythm of the playwright’s words. We used no stage blood. We toured to promote the production but also to bring an exciting bit of theater to students who otherwise might never experience a live performance. With young audiences, we always revisited the kill scene in slow motion so they could understand the illusion. A middle school principal who’d seen the full production invited me and my fight partner to perform at her school, but only if we stopped short of the final verse and the killing. That was a performance her students missed.
The telling of stories in the dramatic arts is about choices. No matter that a playwright believes their every word is sacred; the story opens up because of the choices an actor makes with their body. Sometimes that includes violence. A word may be inaudible or mumbled, but the body projects, and the body is what the audience notices first, even before the narrative vein of the story.
Violence is always climactic on the stage but, done properly, retains the singular purpose of moving the story forward. If not, it flattens the writer’s intent. Turns what should be cathartic into a ho-hum bit of stage business. Young actors especially are prone to getting caught up in the emotion of physical action, and it’s at this point that a fight director can help them with techniques that are both safe and theatrically effective. Most of the schools I work with now use intimacy coordinators, a welcome addition when we’re working out scenes that are ripe with threat and expectation. A slap is … all that. By training them in skills that allow the actor to act through the scene, instead of relying on instinct or preconceived notions of violence or intimacy, something special can happen, both onstage and for the audience.
Romeo and Juliet doesn’t hold quite the poignancy without the fights and the deaths. Who is Tybalt without his fire and his swashbuckling? Without the “dishonorable” killing of Mercutio? Who is Romeo without his willingness to avenge his friend’s death? What is the play without a kiss? I’ve choreographed the sword fights the play requires in professional, college, and high school productions. The final suicides? Still the most difficult actions I stage. I demonstrate for Romeo how to convulse as the poison takes its aim. I sit on the funeral bier with Juliet and show her how to plunge a dagger into her heart. How to portray the realization of her choice. Am I being respectful of the triggers there? I question myself always. I question the actors always. R&J tells a brutal story with an ending brought about by poor choices: lack of restraint, willful ignorance, and the continuation of musty, mostly forgotten feuds. Lust, anger, rebellion. Secrets. Choices that condemn families to lives and deaths of grief. The stuff of tragedy, the stuff of a good story.
A contact face slap doesn’t have the distance or sense of fantasy other bits of stage action have. In that sense, it is more dangerous than spectacular. And now, by at least one school, I am being told I should no longer teach or demonstrate this mildly painful technique. Stage violence can be visceral, terrifying, and emotionally wrenching—for the audience. But for the actor, stage violence is only one method by which they tell a story. Evisceration by sword, a face punch, eye gouging? A kick to the crotch? I’ve taught and staged all these in high school productions. Does a contact face slap trump all those? We can’t stop art from stirring emotions. Whether through physical actions and words on a stage, painting, music, or photography, stories can be powerful. Why else tell them?
While students revel and must be contained in their enthusiasm in delivering a mimed face kick or a gut punch, what I’ve taken home from the hundreds of workshops I’ve taught is the hesitation of young people to slap the faces of their peers. No one should enjoy striking another person, just as no one should experience pleasure at the thought of cutting someone’s throat (a scene young actors have performed in at least three variations I have choreographed for the stage). The very closeness required, the touching of another person’s face, is difficult, and should be. I don’t push actors beyond their comfort in this, but do expect them to practice the technique and understand it as part of their storytelling toolbox. That to perform the act safely and effectively can elevate their abilities on the stage.
Do I enjoy teaching this skill? I do. When I invite a willing student to slap me, we walk through the process I teach: touching the target portion of the face, touching a little harder, striking the cheek with just enough force to make noise. The contact slap is not a haymaker; it doesn’t send the victim flying over the back of a couch. That said, I’ve had a few students who clearly took to the act. One had a big, meaty hand and used it to good effect, cracking the air with sound as he made contact, sending me reeling backward. But this was the consequence of surprise more than force. Another shocked me with the directness of her strike: After a few testing forays, she squared up and whacked me a good one. Both slaps were perfect, the force spread over the entire surface area of my cheek, the pain only momentary and … uh, bracing. I couldn’t help but smile. The students had learned their lesson well. Thankfully, in both instances, I’d thought to remove my glasses. And I had succeeded in giving the students a safe place to practice a new and unusual skill.
There are non-contact methods of slapping: striking one’s hand or a partner’s hand. Those techniques work, but they don’t tell the story in quite the same way. Maybe the actors will never use a contact slap onstage, but they will remember their struggle with the act.
I don’t know these young people’s families or backgrounds. I can’t know everything they bring to a scene. And quite frankly, I don’t want them to experience the violence; I work with them to project the intent of the movement, to act with proficiency and care, and to understand that telling a story involves elements of morality, of choice. I give them tools to which they can refer when emotions might overwhelm them and threaten their control.
At its best, stage violence is dialogue, both between actors and among actors and their audience. It can be mumbled and misunderstood just as words can. The actors’ comfort with what I’ve given them is paramount to their craft. A slap is craft. All of us in theater, no matter the level, search for those perfect moments that elevate a writer’s words to epiphany. The slap is only one syllable in a long story, but one we work to get right. I understand and respect educators’ need to protect their students from trauma. But that’s a teaching opportunity I will miss.
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March 06, 2023 at 10:00PM
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Teaching stage violence: I have decades of experience showing kids how to hit. Lately, things have changed. - Slate
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