Macbeth

What does a fight director do?

The key responsibility of the fight director is to create all the action that happens on stage and in Macbeth there’s rather a lot of action!

To start off with, I ask the director about their concept for the show: “What period are you setting this in? Are you doing it modern day? Are you doing it historical? Or is it some kind of fantasy realm?” Because once I know that, I can then start to look at what sort of weapons I'm actually going to use. I also need to know what the actor is going to be wearing, so that I don’t choreograph moves that they can’t do in their costume.

Then I get down to the actual nitty gritty of each scene, talking to the director and the actors about how they are interpreting that character and that scene. Even though the words are written down and the play has been around for hundreds of years, you can interpret it in many different ways. You must never arrive with a fight already worked out, because it’s not going to fit the way that those actors are going to play those characters.