Stage Violence - A Fine Line

Have you ever seen a fight on stage and just not believed it? Have you ever seen someone fall on stage and worry that they may be really hurt. These are the two extremes directors and actors strive to avoid in presenting any sort of violence onstage. The audience must believe that the fight is real, but must never believe that anyone is truly hurt. To master this thin line of believability, the process begins with rehearsal.

In the initial rehearsals, a fight choreographer is utilized. Their job is to break the fight into beats. In these beats, the actors know exactly where they are at all times. Usually the appearance of violence is the job of the receiver. It is not the person who throws the punch who must “sell” it, but the person being punches who must provide the reality in their reaction. If a person grabs someone by the lapel and pins them to the wall, it is the person pinned who is supporting their own weight and who is giving the appearance of struggling and gasping for breath. Throughout the rehearsal process, these beats are rehearsed over and over and over until the involved actors can go through the beats without hesitation or trepidation.

It is important to note here that stage combat is not always a complex choreography. In Enemy of the People, there was a simple move made by Cliff to intercept Sandy when she becomes overexcited at Tammy’s discovery of the polluted spa. What appeared to be a simple matter of stepping in between the two ladies, had to be choreographed as intricately as a sword fight or a slugfest. If Cliff is too early in his interception of Sandy, the scene loses the intensity. If Cliff is too late, Sandy runs over Tammy.

Once the scene is choreographed and rehearsed to the point that the show is ready to open, there is a new process of preparation which happens every night before the start of the show. Fight call is a walk though of all the stage combat in the show just before the show starts. Usually this is done at a slower speed, building up to full speed with each repetition.

When you see physical staging in Mouse in a Jar or any other Red Tape show, you can be certain that the safety of the performers in the primary objective. Every move is well rehearsed to make you believe that the fight is real. Every move is well rehearsed so you can fear for the safety of the characters without fearing for the safety of the actors.

Errol McLendon
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009
Tickets are available through our website.

Talking the Talk

When speaking in real life, we pause, we interrupt, we overlap, we start and stop. If we are to recreate life onstage, the same speech patterns should exist. But do they? Often language onstage is very polite and neat with each performer taking his turn, rarely fishing for words or ideas.

A playwright friend of mine once told me she spent every day listening to the way people talk on the bus and every night trying to capture that on paper. It is an age old challenge tackled by playwrights, directors and actors. How to talk like real people onstage.

Shakespeare sometimes included directions on how to speak his lines in the lines themselves. Hamlet gives the players the instruction to “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue.” If only there were a Hamlet in every play to convey the playwright’s wishes.

Pinter makes a heroic attempt to help the actors speak the words as he hears them in his head by loading his scripts with pauses, silences, ellipses and dashes. Numerous essays and books have been written to explain what each of these designations imply, but which book or essay to follow becomes the dilemma.

Sometimes the reality slips in during the rehearsal process. There was a wonderful overlapping of lines in Red Tape’s Enemy of the People. Peter Stockman is arguing with his sister and states “You are contractually obligated to receive the approval of the commission before disclosing information to the public” to which Tammy replies “I have the right to speak the truth.” Even though this was not written as an overlapping line, it evolved into one during the rehearsal process. The overlapping built the tension and accentuated each character’s emotional investment in the argument. Rather than seeing two people expressing their opinions one after the other, you saw each person verbally swinging at the other simultaneously, creating one of the most electrifying exchanges in the show.

In Mouse in a Jar, Matyna Majok has created an inspired shorthand which gives the actors and director a clear roadmap of how she hears the voices. Below is her “Dialogistics”.

Brackets [ ] indicate words unspoken but intended.
Slashes / indicate overlap or quickly followed speech.
Double-columned dialogue is spoken simultaneously.
Non-traditional spacing and floating words are requests for poetics and extra syllables. Speed bumps, in essence. Please feel encouraged to experiment – they’re mostly suggestions.

With this innovative scripting, Matyna has made great strides in bridging the gap between the speech we hear in public and the speech we hear on stage.

Come hear the speech as Matyna intended it to be presented.

Errol McLendon
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Purchase tickets through our website.

Meet the Cast! - Errol McLendon

Part four in a series of interviews with the cast of Enemy of the People at Red Tape Theatre.

Name: Errol McLendon

Role: Dan Horster

Where are you from?

Born in Starkville, MS - raised in Cleveland, MS - also lived in Atlanta and Dallas.

What is the first stage play you remember seeing?

Some Dallas Summer Musical - first play I chose - The Me Nobody Knows.

When/why did you start acting?

Found out in high school that there was an alternative to jock, brain or class leader. I had not really found my place in high school until I was cast as the lead in my junior year. I finally found out the beauty of not belonging to a specific group and that individuality was vital in the world of the theatre. My grandfather spent his entire life saying "I could have been in vaudeville", "I could have been in theatre". I vowed not to reach the end of my life saying "I could have . . ." I would rather say "I tried . . .".

Tell us about your character in Enemy of the People.

I represent the person who puts friendship above all else. Politics, public opinion and religion pale in comparison to loyalty to friends and family. I am a member of the town, but not of the town, because I have seen the world driving a truck across country. Because of this exposure, I have a broader world view than most of the people in town. Quick to anger, slow to forgive, Dan would risk everything for Tammy.

What's next for you?

Directing You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown for a teen group in Libertyville and spending the summer enjoying the weather, cooking out and working in the yard and around my house.

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009.
Tickets are available through our website.