Macbeth

What is it like to direct fights on the Globe stage?

One of the nice things about the Globe stage is actually the setting – having the audience on three sides, on the ground and also going up into the sky on three sides. In a way, it means you can perform more realistic action because it’s seen from every single angle. If you’re doing something for television, it’s completely flat-on, to the camera; it’s not in 3D at all, so you can do all sorts of cheats and you only really have to make it look good from one angle. Whereas, at the Globe, you’re seeing it from almost all the way round, so you don’t have that restriction. However, this means you do need to consider the view of every section of the audience.

The pillars actually provide you with a solid object that you can throw people into, which you often don’t get on sets because you’ll get a terrible wobble if you throw people into the walls usually. On the Globe stage it’s not possible for everybody to see everything all the time because of the pillars, but you just have to make sure that your action moves around so that everybody will get to see it at some point. But there are always blind spots in theatres that you have to be aware of. Any piece of action that you keep it in the center of a stage becomes really boring after a few minutes, so any fight should move around the space. What would be nice to do at the Globe is to actually take the action out amongst the audience, but we’ve not been able to do it in this production. The venue does give you huge possibilities. You’ve just got to be very aware of health and safety if you’re amongst the audience.

The only thing to potentially worry about is the fact that you’ve got people’s faces right up to the edge of the stage. So you’ve got to be careful that you’re not either kicking the people in the front row or swinging swords down into their faces. Particularly for this production, because we’ve got two thrust walkways coming out of the front of the stage, where there is fighting happening. So you have to be aware of the proximity of the audience, but in a way, it makes it very real.