Do you know how to do a macaco? How are your rapier skills? Are you proficient in unarmed combat? Have you passed the test that allows you to indicate on your résumé that you're an "actor-combatant?" If not, you may be at a disadvantage when auditioning for many of today's films, television shows, and theatre productions—and that goes for men and women alike.
If you want to be a classical actor, you have to know how to fight, as many Shakespearean plays include battle scenes and require swordplay by the lead characters. Many movies also feature extensive fight work. Though most of it is still performed by male actors, films and TV programs, such as Alias and the Kill Bill movies, are requiring combat work by their female stars.
Oscar-winning actor Charlize Theron reportedly performed her own stunts as the star of the new action movie Aeon Flux, which opened last weekend. "Her performance is spectacular," says Neal "Xingu" Rodil, the capoeira choreographer and instructor who trained Theron for her fight work in the film. Xingu is a Los Angeles–based capoeira teacher who is also proficient in break dancing and house dance styles. He performs in movies and has choreographed and appeared in many of music videos and commercials.
According to Xingu, it was Theron, a frequent traveler to Brazil, who suggested using capoeira as her character's fighting style in Aeon Flux. A mixture of break dancing, yoga, and gymnastics, capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial arts dance form done to music. "It's been around for over 900 years, and the martial arts techniques are hidden within the dance movements," Xingu explains. "That's because capoeira evolved within communities of African slaves in Brazil. The slaves were preparing to revolt, but since they were continuously watched, in order to train to fight they had to appear to be doing something else."
Xingu feels that actors benefit greatly from studying the discipline because it's a movement form based on call and response: "That's one of the foundations of good acting, isn't it? Making an appropriate response to the actions of others? Capoeira is done freestyle, just like an improv. We even call it 'playing.' It's all about being in the moment."
Though Theron had seen capoeira performed, she had no training in the discipline before the four months she spent preparing for Aeon Flux. "She had never even done martial arts before, but she had been a ballet dancer, and that knowledge gave her a very good foundation to work from," says Xingu. "The problem was that she had just finished doing Monster, and she had gained a lot of weight for the role and hadn't been working out at all. Usually actors would have a year or two to prepare for a physical action movie like Aeon Flux. So what we did with her, getting her ready for this film so quickly, is really amazing."
Evidence of Xingu's work with her can be seen throughout the film, as well as in its trailer, in which Theron does a macaco. "It means 'monkey flips,'" says Xingu. "She steps back, grabs a guy's head, and snaps his neck."
Unlike martial arts, stage and screen combat work is never intended to hurt your opponent or even attempt to do so. "That's why it's so much harder to do stage combat than to just fight someone," explains Felix Ivanov, a theatrical fight choreographer who teaches at Juilliard and the Actors Center in New York. "In a real fight, your only goal is to injure the other person, but an actor engaged in stage combat has many different goals he must accomplish." First and foremost, an actor in a fight scene has to protect his partner. "So the actor must think multidimensionally. He's thinking about his movements, his partner's safety, his portrayal of the character, and oftentimes he's speaking lines, as well."
Ivanov thinks combat work should be a requisite part of any actor's training, just as important as voice and speech. "I don't separate stage combat from the basic study of movement for actors," he says. "Stage combat is a discipline that synthesizes bodywork, rhythm, reaction coordination, and imagination—all the basic tools that are so important for actors. A stage combat is a dialogue by hand or with weapons. It's not that far removed, or really any different at all, from acting. It's simply another way that actors 'dialogue.' It's not just about fighting, but it's an extension of the performance of a role."
He is disturbed that many actors study different types of bodywork, such as yoga, yet don't know anything about stage combat. "They're doing all these abstract kinds of movement work, but not practicing techniques that are directly applicable to their profession. Actors' movement training should be geared for the work they will be doing onstage—tumbling, fighting, dancing, whatever will make them more effective actors. It's not about building the body, or learning to 'feel the cosmos.'"
Having studied several forms of combat and martial arts techniques, Ivanov combines them all in his choreography and teaching. "In films and plays today, you will see everything used and mixed together—kicks, boxing, flying—so actors need to be capable of incorporating it all," he notes.
"In some ways stage combat is the opposite of martial arts," explains J. David Brimmer, a specialist in violence and a fight director who teaches stage combat privately and at New York University. "You're not trying to hurt your partner; you're trying to protect him. So in a lot of the techniques, the energy is moving away and not in. Sometimes if you have a very strong martial [arts] background, you have to retrain your body." Brimmer was a competitive fencer when he was a teenager; when he began working as a professional actor, he was often asked to help stage fight scenes. "During one of the fights, I had a very near miss with a sword and suddenly realized there was a lot more to stage combat than just knowing how to fence. It was then that I got involved with the Society of American Fight Directors."
Brimmer is a certified fight director and teacher with the organization, which offers a series of skill proficiency tests for actors. "There are eight different weapons or styles that you can test in: unarmed, rapier, dagger, broadsword, sword and shield, knife-fighting, quarterstaff, single sword, and small sword. If you earn a certificate of proficiency in unarmed combat, and either rapier, dagger, or single sword, plus one of the other styles, you can then be classified as an actor-combatant within the Society," Brimmer explains. "And if you pass six out of the eight skills, you become an advanced actor-combatant."
Although actors who have had other kinds of movement training, particularly sports or dance, may learn stage combat more readily than others, Brimmer says everyone can and should learn to fight. "Plays require combat work from actors of all different shapes and sizes. And even if you're primarily interested in film work, it's best to study stage combat first, and then take some film and TV courses that will teach you things like how to make sure to stay in frame while doing your moves, and what kinds of punches will read on film and which won't. If you have a basis in stage combat, you'll find it easy to transfer your skills to the screen, but the reverse is not true."
Brimmer feels it is most important for performers to understand that effective combat work is chiefly about acting. "The physical techniques are just calisthenics," he says. "It's good acting that makes a good fight."