ROUND 2: SCULPTING THE MUSIC OF VIOLENCE w/ Michael Glavan
When is a fight not a fight?
When the playwright and director say so. And that kind of intentional restraint per a profound and deep investment into this play and these characters is why I LOVE working with this company.
Staging a fight is like staging any kind of storytelling in that there needs to be a clear beginning, middle, and end to the artistic frame (a beat or short arc of action). When stage combat really works, it feels less like “a fight” and something more like a spontaneous, often clumsy, fit that feels well tethered to the scene. To me, finding that organic storytelling is like composing music. It may not be the most melodic or flashy in its harmonies and counterpoint, but there is a clear composition at work. That composition needs to intentionally sculpt the rhythms of the individuals in a scene as well as how the entirety of a cast contributes to the not-fight fight.
What’s extra hard, is that when teaching and learning fight choreography, it can be very helpful to start big in hopes of clarifying physically the entirety of the physical form of a movement, gesture, or body shape. Starting big allows the idea to be hyper clear before it begins grounding itself and veiling itself more and more into the reality of the play. For us in the not-fight fight, we had to start big. This orchestra has a lot of pieces playing in very few measures of music in order to make its storytelling impact.
In the composition of movement, we talked as a cast about how intense the sensation of touch with one another should be. As humans who relate to one another through touch, we tend to stick to three major categories or pressure: 1. powder/makeup soft application to the top of the skint, 2. painting, application firmly onto the canvas of the skin cognizant of the muscle structure beneath the surface, 3. sculpting, application of pressure so that we are conscious of both the muscle and bones of the physical form.
The first pressure of touch I equate with undecided or half-hearted touches. Sometimes this is a kind of touch between two good friends who maybe don’t support each other this way. I can shake hands with strangers and co-workers all day applying a firm and non-threatening sculpting pressure, but ask me to place my hand on a colleague's shoulder would immediately make me feel very different about how I instigate touch. We briefly point out a couple opportunities in the scene where there are opportunities for there to be less-committed, less-sure touches between the characters.
The second degree of touch I equate with typical friendly touching. It’s enough pressure to be certain and clear about the presence of touch without being forceful or assertive. Whenever possible, I like to choreograph in this sensation for most if not all of a fight. It’s strong enough to carry the story, and not so strong that actors may be sharing potentially dangerous amounts of weight or pressure with one another. It is repeatable with less invitation to strain, and when committed to correctly, can be very convincing in portraying violence. There are tricks we can add to the quality of this painting touch to make it appear stronger or lighter in its force with scene partners.
The third degree of touch I try to keep exclusively for moments where sharing weight with a scene partner is essential to the storytelling. This happens often in any kind of partnered dancing, and the same can be true of intense physical stage combat. The goal of sculptural touch is not to have anyone squeezing or pressing so hard that they are looking to make contact with their scene partner's bone, but that they are applying enough pressure and weight to support their partner’s form. It can feel a bit like a paradox, but when fighting, the goal is to work SUPER SAFELY which often is a game of supporting each other’s bodies in ways that are actually very filled-with care while appearing to lookin hostile.
Any movements that are choreographed, and the degrees of pressure/touch applied during them, is a matter of technician work. I often ask actors explicitly to NOT act while we learn and rehearse the choreography of fights. As technicians, we need to learn the music of the movement before we can start making choices where to accent or flourish. The same is true with actors and their lines, they need to know the words first (and the responses from their scene partners) before they can start making hard and fast calls about how they will deliver them. In emotionally intense scenes - as most fights can be - I like to have actors use a stand-in gesture for any emotion they may be lured into bringing into the technical work. As opposed to bringing RAGE or WRATH into a fight scene, I offer that they can bring the sensation of expanding/expansion of contracting/contraction. That’s it. Only those two options. There are no emotional judgements on those two choices and they remain polar opposites. Yet with just those two stand-in sensations, there are plenty of ways to carry a story: THUS BEGINS THE SCULPTING of the full scene’s music.
A well-built fight has all the layers of a musical piece. You’ve got your solos—those character-defining moments when one performer takes the spotlight (expansion). Maybe it’s a dramatic disarm (expansion then contraction), a risky leap (contraction then expansion), or a sudden emotional pivot (either extreme becoming the other). Then there are duets (either parallel expansions and contractions or a wave of shifting energy) - movements connected by shared energy. Sometimes it’s graceful, sometimes chaotic, but always telling a story. There are harmonies, too - how the arc of one character’s actions echo another’s. Or how does the escalation of one character begin a musical round of sorts with other characters.
Harnessing where each character expands and where they contract is very helpful is blocking these fights. It also helps set the pacing of a scene. As actors start owning the technical aspects of their choreography, their instincts for the timing of their expansions and contractions begin to take shape. The variance and timings of the individuals then must be sculpted so that it can be observed. If everything happens all at once, it becomes impossible to understand anything (although that could be a story too). For our purposes, there isn’t a long not-fight fight scene, but there’s enough where the audience needs to understand a few different things happening. After we built the technical steps and let the actors find their natural inclinations for expansion and contraction, the pacing of the whole orchestration became very clear. From that point, we’re able to set very specifically where the cues are for different movements - down to clockwork. In the storytelling there are a few things we can keep at the front of our mind: we have to begin in a place that gives us somewhere to go, and we have to conclude for a reason.
And don’t underestimate silence. A held breath before the first punch. A glance that says more than a monologue. Stillness is its own kind of music, and in a fight, it’s just as powerful as motion. Those pauses—the rests—let the action breathe, let the audience catch up emotionally. They’re not dead space. They’re where anticipation builds.
What people don’t always realize is how collaborative all this is. It’s not just one person telling everyone where to stand and when to duck. It’s a process. Actors bring their instincts, their characters, their physicality. The choreographer shapes that, sets the tempo, adjusts the dynamics. You rehearse it over and over—not just to nail the moves, but to find the music in it. And just like with a good band or ensemble, the goal isn’t just precision. It’s connection.
There is music happening for the not-fight fight we worked on the other night, and yet, we’re definitely still processing. The two things that are on my mind is how our music plays in the real space on the real stage and smoothing our transitions. The acoustics are bound to be different and may very well require an adjustment to our spacing. It’s rarely a perfect transition when spacing moves from the rehearsal room to the theatre, I suspect we may be re-sculpting just a few shapes here and there while hoping the music retains its general form. When it comes to smoothing transitions, I find it’s NEVER helpful to try polishing the china when it’s still in the kiln. I have worked with too many directors and choreographers who try to fine-tune work to a polished performance level quality while the substance of the movement is still incredibly fresh. It can absolutely destroy future opportunities of discovery, collaboration, and more nuanced work. Almost always, transitions smooth themselves and fight a beautiful sense of grounded reality in step with the music of the scene when actors get to own and shape it themselves during rehearsal. For us all - may we never hyper-focus on the accents, flourishes, or trills before natural dynamics and fundamental notes have found their way.
