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[NOISE].
Down I go. [NOISE]
>> Ouch.
>> [LAUGH] So that's how it works.
Hi. I'm Rick Sordelet, and I'm a fight
director. [MUSIC].
Eleanor Duza said, I am merely the, the vessel to the muse, and I've embraced
that. The fights that I created in my head in
the vacuum of my self, serve no purpose. They were a template that gave us
something to start with, but it pales in comparison to walking in the door,
listening, listening to the director, listening to the actors, finding out what
they think their limitations are, and then starting to put together the fight.
If I listen carefully, everybody tells me everything I need in order to put the
fight together. The first thing I'll ask the director,
tell me your story. The most important part of choregraphy
really is in the text, and from the text comes the action.
Playwright writes a storyline, and in this case Tracy Letz has a, okay, we have
this story, and the story is about this man.
This man happens to be 60 years old, and for the first time in his life he is
going to fight for something that matters.
And that you know, that was the challenge you know, to try and create a fight that
didn't look like a fight. That looked like a man in his 60's who's
fighting a man in his 50's, and that there was resolve, because it was the
fight of his life. The, the operative word is illusion and,
when we throw a punch you know, we're throwing a punch in such a way that the
audience will decode the information. Their eye takes in every image, and then
they have to translate it so that their brain understands what the image is.
In the process of that translation, we can hide things.
I'm going to hit Mike, and as I hit Mike he's going to turn, and it's going to
look like I hit him. What you're going to see right now is
that there's air between my fist and his face.
So when I throw the punch, pow! That's what we don't want the audience to
see. What we want them to see is the illusion
that I hit him in the face. [NOISE]
>> Uhh.
>> I can hit him and give him a backhand.
>> Uhh.
[NOISE] Uhh. [NOISE]
>> The sounds we have to do on stage.
There's no post-production for theater. Watch this hand.
This hand actually makes the contact[NOISE] right here on the chest.
In truth all of it's acting. When I use the word schmacting, it's that
sort of um,[NOISE] kind of thing. [SOUND] There it is.
Now if I put a little juice to it and we both do some schmacting, it looks a
little something like this. Son of a[NOISE].
Film is one little camera. It's a one eyed legally blind entity,
that's what it is. Bam.
In theater you've got all those people and all those people have two
eyes[LAUGH], and they all have a computer attached to those two eyes.
And so your job becomes one that you have to, to design the fight in such a way
that, that every eye is fooled into thinking that there's a real fight going
on. And we can't have a stunt double jump
in[LAUGH] in the end of the play. We've just invested 2 and 1/2 hours of
our life with this guy and we love him and we want to see him go through the
rest of his journey. And so you have usually three weeks to
teach this guy how to sword fight in such a way that it's believable.
The thing about The Royal Family that was so much fun is that, the, the character
that Reg Rodgers plays is sort of this Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks, devil may
care, heartthrob of the day, kind of guy. He just has that zest for life.
And another man who's a good fighter and an athlete, just defending himself from
this guy. And that was what we tried to do.
So the sword fighting itself is not complicated.
It's not very complicated like I would do for a Hamlet or a Romeo and Juliet.
It's actually just a great deal of fun, but, but, but it's done with such gusto
and vigor that the audience is left with, you know, a real sense of this guy and
the situation. But like that whoa, last minute kind of
thing. The reason that we have a fight call for
every show is for the actors' safety. The number one rule in, in my list of 10
is safety. Safety first.
Safety first. Safety first.
If it's not safe and we can't do it a thousand times out of a thousand, we
can't do it, and there's no disputing this.
This is what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about a
fight call. This gives the actors an opportunity to
come in, drop all the pedestrian from the day to day, and just focus on what they
will be doing later that night when they do the fight.
[NOISE] And what the fight call does is it brings us back to the theatrical
reality. Now I walk through the fight with my
partner. And I can put my focus physically onto
what I'm going to be doing later that night so that, when I get to that fight,
my body has experienced it already, and it just steps into place very nicely and
organically. By the time we get to performance, the
real trick for a fight director is to have the fight scene be so immersed into
the arc of the scene, there's no separation.
It's not like oh, I went to see the play last night, and the fight scene was
great. I don't want to hear that.
I want to hear the play was great and there was a fight in it.
It was just the work, and that is an example of what I like best about doing
fights for theater, is that you just don't know where the fight scene begins
and you don't know where else its just part of the story.
[MUSIC].