Artist Interview: Fight Director J. Alex Cordaro
Slaps, falls, and spills: choreographing the physical comedy in DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER
“Fight direction is a highly rewarding job that takes decades and decades of training to hopefully make somebody look like they’re making it up on the spot,” said J. Alex Cordaro, the fight director and frequent Lantern Theater Company collaborator whose handiwork is all over Don’t Dress for Dinner, onstage at the Lantern May 24 through June 24, 2018. The pratfalls and punches demanded by farce call for a stage combat professional who can help the actors stage those moments, make them funny, and keep them safe. We caught up with Alex to talk about fight direction and staging combat in comedies.
Can you talk a little bit about what fight direction is?
Fight direction is the theatrical art form in which we create safe, and repeatable, pictures of violence, which can be as simple as a stage slap or a fight with 50 people wielding swords and shields. It needs to tell a theatrical story with a beginning, middle, and end. It needs to be observable from the audience so they can follow the storyline. It needs to be safe for the actors, and they need to feel confident in its repeatability and sustainability over the course of rehearsals and performances.
What brought you to fight direction?
I grew up in a theater family. I took my first stage combat course when I was 11, started working with a stage combat troupe in Pittsburgh at 14, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I studied acting, singing, dancing, mime, physical theater, physical comedy. All of those fuel the work and inform my work.
What is your process for developing the fights? Do you plan it out ahead, or do you wait until you are in the room?
I do not plan it out ahead of time. I show up to the rehearsal room with all my homework done, and I show up certainly with strong ideas and pictures. Sometimes I bring photographs of shapes or art that I think will inform the rehearsal process, but I find it is counterproductive for me to pre-choreograph things before I get into the room.
Everybody has a voice. I’m not directing the play, I’m directing the fights, so the director certainly has a vision that I’m trying to serve. The actors have opinions about the characters that they’re playing that I need to incorporate. If I give them something that they feel is false it will always read as false in performance. So I show up as prepared as I can possible be and then we build something together as a team.
Did you have any pictures or art for this show?
No, I just read the script a bunch of times and took copious notes. [Director Kathryn MacMillan] and I met and compared notes, and we agreed there were instances of stage combat or choreography that we needed to address every few pages; I think there are like 24 moments in Act 1 and 18 moments in Act 2, or something close to that. In a perfect world, when the little moments happen well, they don’t look like they’re choreographed. So someone who isn’t trained in stage combat might see the things that I do, but in a perfect world I have choreographed myself out of it so it doesn’t look like stage combat.
What is the relationship between what you do and what the actors bring to it? You give them the moves, but they have to sell it. How does that work?
So, basically we’re creating — as a team— a physical script. On day one of rehearsals when they sit around the table and they’re reading the script with each other, they can’t act that yet, right? They have to go through the table read. They have to figure out what the objective of the scene is, how they’re going to beat out the scene, how they’re going to choose different playable verbs to make the scene interesting, engaging, and organic. Same thing with stage combat. We start with a rough shape, and see if the director likes the shape. Once we have a strong outline, we start whittling away and laying in technique, and it’s all predicated on safety, repeatability, and — in the case of this play — if it’s funny.
Some things are funnier if they happen right before a line of text. Some things are funnier if they happen right after a line of text. Some things are funnier if they happen with a specific rhythm. So we layer and we build the structure of what the fight’s going to be. It evolves during rehearsals, just like all scene work does. An actor learns their lines until they don’t have to think about them anymore, and then they can listen and respond within the confines of the textual response. It’s the same thing with stage combat. They have choreography that they’re not allowed to vary from, but once they have that in their muscle memory then they can respond to what is happening physically in real time with an honest response within the context of the choreography.
What are the special considerations when you are doing this for comedy? Does your work differ when you are doing a serious drama versus a farce?
Comedy considerations are all about timing and pace. I teach a stage combat class in which we do the same exact choreography five or six different ways. One way can be horrible to watch, brutally violent. One way can be absolutely hilarious. One way can be melodramatic. One way can be totally flat and uninteresting. It’s really just about the timing and the energy behind it. Something as simple as putting your hand on someone’s arm can have 100 different flavors or intentions. And if we want it to look like it hurts, there are ways we make contact with large muscle groups where we can make different kinds of sound. Some sounds are funnier than other sounds. Some reactions are funnier than other reactions. So while they might be the same kind of moves that we would do in a serious, modern drama, because of the way that we create or execute them within the timing and the intention, hopefully they read as funny.
Do you have a favorite physical bit in the show?
I love the end chunk. I don’t want to give anything away for those who haven’t seen it, but I love the end. I love the energy that everyone brings to it. It’s very funny, it’s a fast-paced show, and the bits — they’re really sinking their teeth into the bits and really making them a lot of fun to watch.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
Don’t Dress for Dinner is onstage at the Lantern May 24 through June 24, 2018. Visit our website for tickets and information.
