Fight Directing "Fool for Love"

Hello all,

This is Meron Langsner again. This time I’d like to give a quick overview of the fight directing process for Fool for Love.

Like any other design discipline, fight directing begins with the text. After giving the play an initial read, I go through it once more notating any violence or potential violence and where it fits into the script and plot structure. Those notes get sent to the Director, Bridget Kathleen O'Leary, and she and I have a conversation about what she wants out of each moment of violence so that I can go into the choreography with the entire concept of the production in mind.

Something that came up right away was the use of a lasso in this play. Lassoing is not a commonly practiced movement discipline around here and was not a part of my own training, so this was wisdom I had to seek elsewhere. An old friend of mine from martial arts circles, Dr. Peter Ward, an anatomy professor at West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine as well as the head instructor of Greenbrier Traditional Martial Arts Society, happened to have this skill (he is from Wyoming). He came to our aid with a short instructional video he created and sent our way via the internet. This was useful not only in helping Tim Smith obtain that skill, but also in deciding on how certain set pieces would be placed in order to serve both the safety of everyone involved and that specific series of dramatic moments.

Before rehearsals started I attended a production meeting where I was able to assess how I would work within the parameters of the set and costume design, and equally important, get a feel for how the concept was coming together so that everything I composed would fit in with the whole. Ideally, it should be unclear to the audience where my work begins and ends in relation to the director’s. Knowing what the designs look like is an important aspect in making this happen. Questions I ask set designers include whether or not certain set pieces can take weight and/or impact, as well as whether small set pieces can be moved around and used in the fights. When looking at costume designs I need to know how much freedom of movement the performers will have as well as what kind of shoes they might be wearing during the fights.

The main part of my job, the work with the actors themselves, can often be very brief. In this case the entire composition of the fights took something like two ninety minute rehearsals early in the process, followed by a return trip to watch a dress rehearsal and give notes.

As my actors in this piece are very physically adept, I was able to give them some fairly difficult moves with confidence that they would assimilate them into their work safely and effectively. For some sequences they were given very precise movements meant to create very specific illusions. These were drilled in the moments they needed to happen, and then set. For some of those moments the actors and I showed Bridget some options and then we decided which one was most effective choice for that point in the characters’ journey. For other sequences, I gave the actors a framework in which to safely improvise the violence during the rehearsal process before setting it. In those sequences I used a “contemporary violence” technique developed by a woman named Ricki Ravitts, who is an esteemed fight director based out of New York City and one of my first instructors in the discipline. In this method the actors can create some fairly intense movement while staying both physically and emotionally safe. Many of the scenes between Tim and Stacy were developed with Ricki’s methods. The scene between Tim and Andrew was mostly “by the book” as it were, since the moment called for in the script is so specific.

Towards the end of the rehearsal process I attended a dress rehearsal and gave notes. The adjustments I had to make in this case were few and minor. An angle on one illusion had to be reset to sell well for the entire audience, and other than that all that was really necessary was to check in with the actors to make sure they still felt safe and comfortable with the choreography.

The violence in Fool for Love is an integral part of the storytelling. Though there are relatively few moments of actual assault on stage, each one is crafted into the play to move the plot forward.