Macbeth

How do you ensure that stage fights are safe?

Before you start you have to give the general health and safety bit: to say, “Look guys, these are steel blades”, or “these are aluminium blades, or wooden or rubber…therefore, they are going to do this, and you might not be used to it.” For instance, the swords in this show are all steel blades, and they’re quite old, with a lot of nicks down the edges, so as we’ve been learning the fights, the guys have had to be extra careful, because if they catch either their own arm, or their partner’s arm, or even just clothing, on the sword then it will rip. In a way that’s useful, because it prepares them for the show, the swords will get dented and chipped with use, it can’t be helped. So, it’s important to be conscious that these are actually sharp, but it is a good thing. They’re not something that you’re going to slice your Sunday roast with, they are still lethal weapons.

The easiest way to think of a fight is that it’s like a script. You learn the lines and say the lines as they are written, but you use your own interpretation. So when you’re performing the fight, although the moves need to stay exactly the same, the energy and the emotion that you put behind those moves can change. So if one night Romeo hasn’t quite managed to get himself into that really wound-up emotional state when he goes to kill Tybalt, he might not have the same amount of speed or drive as he goes in for his initial attack, but as long as he’s still doing the same move, that’s absolutely fine, he’s got to have the same truth when he’s doing the fight moves as when he’s reciting his lines. If the moves in a fight vary from performance to performance it would be far too dangerous. These fights have changed every week in rehearsals, and they could still change when they start rehearsing on stage, even once you get to the tech the moves still could change. But once the show’s opened, once we’ve done that final dress rehearsal, those moves never change again. It’s completely set.