ACTION: ACTORS LEARN SECRETS OF STAGE COMBAT

Making two actors on stage look like they're in love is easy. Making the audience believe they're trying to chop, pummel or club each other to death is what one actor calls "the rawest form of acting."

Stage combat, the art of two actors pretending to fight, is part of good storytelling, said Robert W. Dillon Jr., an associate professor of theater at Southeast Missouri State University.

Done well, stage combat creates "safe, theatrical and believable illusions of violence on stage. The audience should never perceive themselves or the actors to be in danger, but they should be able to play along to extent that they can imagine that the characters are."

Dillon, who is a certified actor combatant, gave a demonstration of stage combat during common hour Wednesday at Southeast's Forrest H. Rose Theater.

Historically correct costumes and weapons are important considerations when setting up a fight for the stage. So is character development, Dillon said.

"A fight is never put into a decent play for incidental reasons," Dillon said. "It's there because it advances the story or a character. It's also a good way to get suspense and a sense of danger."

Terry Vallelunga, a 20-year-old theater student at Southeast has worked with Dillon before on staging fight scenes. He said the biggest difference between a real fight and a staged fight is the audience can actually tell what's going on when it's staged.

"Real violence is so fast and so close the audience would never know what happened," he said. "Fight scenes can really be the hardest part of acting. You don't have lines to help you. You don't have your costumes to help you. Basically you're up there by yourself. It's the rawest form of acting."

So how do actors convey this sense of danger without occasionally losing a limb? The same way musicians get to Carnegie Hall.

"We rehearse over and over and over and over and over....." Dillon said.

Dillon uses a number of aids in setting his fight scenes. He knows that depth perception can be manipulated through positioning on stage, making a sword-wielding combatant appear much closer to his victim as he makes a vicious cut with the weapon. It might appear to the audience that the sword tip misses its mark by inches when in fact neither actor is close enough to be in any harm.

The most important part of keeping the actors safe is knowing what the other is going to do.

"The eyes are the first measure of safety," Dillon said. "Keeping eye contact is not only good acting but will allow you to tell if you're partner knows what he is doing."

Vallelunga said rehearsing a fight is imperative but once the actors take the stage they should be prepared for anything -- which aids the actors in making the fight scenes appear to be real.

"It's supposed to be slow and we rehearse it slowly," he said. "But when you're actually acting it it's always much faster. Sometimes you're out there swinging away and you're thinking, `Good Lord this is happening so fast!'"

He said the adrenalin rush of being on stage not only speeds the action but sometimes throws an additional -- and unexpected -- move into the mix.

"It's never exactly the same way twice," Vallelunga said.

Rachel Roberts, an 18-year-old theater freshman at Southeast, said seeing the tricks of staging a fight gives her confidence in her acting.

"It does kind of make you feel at home," she said. "Instead of thinking that there's some guy you're going to have this scene with who's going to go berserk on stage."

Dillon said many actors can go their whole careers without ever doing a slap on stage. But training in stage combat does more than just prepare actors to take a fall as it exposes them to space, movement and self awareness.

"It is a wonderful opportunity to get rid of everything that isn't dramatic," he said. "It's very primal drama. Direct human conflict in its most overt form. There's all sort of covert conflicts that are taking place on stage but when you pick up a sword and start chopping away at someone that's very overt."