Another interview with John Waller, 1993

Also Published on the ART of Fighting blog

 Another slightly later slice of history

Extracted from Norrie Epsteins Book; The Friendly Shakespeare, Published 1993

Again, looking at how things have both moved and things have stayed the same.We must keep what works, while looking to see how we can make things achieve the outcomes better

John Waller: Swordplay and Dueling

Is it enough that a Shakespearean actor speak the lines and act; he must also appear to be an accomplished duelist. As a choreographer of combat, a fight director must make terrified actors look like fierce adversaries. John Waller has been directing fights, battles, and duels for over twenty-five years, and his numerous credits include Ian McKellen's 1989 Richard III at the National Theatre in London and the films Anne of the Thousand Days and The French Lieutenant's Woman.

NE: What is a fight director's goal?

JW: To have an actor do ten blows and have the audience believes that the characters are trying to kill each other. Too much stylistic choreography isn't convincing. It must be a matter of life and death.

NE: How do you get an actor to want to kill someone and at the same time, hold back?

JW: The actor should not feel like killing; the character they play should. Actors are not all that physical, so someone who is really aggressive and strong can be truly frightening. Though one opponent may be baring their teeth and flashing their eyes, the partner should be able to see that they are in control. But all the audience should see is the aggression ­ that's the hard bit
.

NE: How do you go about staging a fight?

JW: What you first do is assess an actor's physical presence, and then you try to persuade them that the character would have been good at fighting. If they are big and heavy, then you choreograph in character. You combine the actual fight with the actor's physique and choreograph around that.

NE: How about staging big battle scenes?

JW: You just have to get everybody moving to fill all the spaces. If you get three people fighting, two against one, and they're the main focus, then you get them to hold center stage. When it's time for them to move, their space is immediately filled by another couple. The other characters fight, but they put slightly less intensity into their movements; otherwise, the audience's eyes would stray from the central actors. If you have two young spear carriers swashbuckling away on stage and you find yourself looking at them instead of the main actors, well, that's wrong. That's not where the emphasis should be.

NE: What sort of fights do you think Shakespeare staged?

JW: They must have been phenomenal, and he always put them at the end of the play as a climax. The actors would have been laughed off the stage if they weren't any good. He wrote at a time when nearly all men fought with swords, from the aristocrats who knew all the newfangled Italian fencing styles and terms, to the apprentice boys who fought with sword and buckler in the English manner. Shakespeare even has Mercutio poking fun of Tybalt's Italian techniques in Romeo and Juliet. What Shakespeare seems to be saying is, it’s all a bit fancy for us English.

NE: How can Richard be a great warrior if he's handicapped?

JW: That's always a problem with Richard III. All actors want to play him with a deformity. But the play is set in about 1480, when the essence of being a knight was to ride horses - the knight on horseback was the equivalent of a tank. When a person is as deformed as Richard is portrayed as being, with a withered arm and a gamey leg, then he logically wouldn't be able to ride a medieval war-horse, which you ride with your left hand because your right hand is the one you fight with.

NE: So how did the real Richard III fight?

JW: It's Olivier's portrayal that everyone copies. Richard had been fighting hand to hand for years and was still fighting when he was killed. Though an actor can play him with some deformity, it shouldn't hinder him from proving what a great warrior he was. If he is too deformed he wouldn't be able to ride a medieval war-horse, so there would be little point in him saying, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

NE: What's your opinion of the famous duel in Olivier's Hamlet ?

JW: It's exciting. But if you ask me if I believe in it, well, not completely. It does not tell the story of Hamlet as much as it should. Hamlets duel is a very difficult thing to direct. Hamlet sets out to patch up the argument with Laertes, and he thinks the duel is just an ordinary fencing match. But Laertes intends to cheat him with a poisoned sword. So they begin to fence, and Hamlet keeps scoring the points, and Laertes can't get him with the sharp sword. So when Hamlet finally is hit and sees his blood, he becomes upset, because he's trying to be a nice guy and his opponent is going for him with a sharp sword. But he still doesn't realize he's dying. So he tries to get the sword away from Laertes, and then he goes for him with it. Now he thinks Laertes is frightened because he has a sharp sword, but he doesn't know that Laertes is frightened because he's got a poisoned sharp sword! Do you see what I mean? It's quite complicated to dramatize. And then, of course, the match turns into a brawl. So you've got an ordinary fencing match and then an aggressive fencing match with Laertes actually fighting for his life. All the while Hamlet never knows that he's also fighting for his life. Although Olivier's duel is exciting, it didn't show all of this.

NE: Wouldn't this be lost on an audience?

JW: If it's done properly and they know the story, no. The movement and the choreography should tell the story of the play. Most of all, the audience has to believe that the characters are fulfilling the demands of the plot. At no time must the audience believe that the actor is in danger. That's the hard part.