Each time an actor on stage is stabbed through the heart, their life truly comes to an end. 

Well, at least that’s what The Fake Fighting Company makes you believe. Hired to work on WHS’s upcoming performance of Robin Hood, theater students are facing a new challenge of learning to fake-fight one another.

Director Jason Katz describes stage combat as “safe fighting. It’s choreography, really, is what it is.” Just like any piece in a musical, the different moves of the dance are put together to form one smooth movement. 

With a small collection of three-hour-long rehearsals, each attack and defense becomes blocked. Actors practice and perfect to make it seem real. Some trickery is used to make the audience believe real damage is being dealt, mainly the use of perspective; however, much of the fighting is simply the memorization of movements, making it seem like an intense battle is being fought. 

Stevie Binns plays Friar Tuck, the ‘best swordsman in all of England.’ He likes “to think that a group of nuns taught him how to sword fight.”

Binns finds great joy in “reacting during fighting, like, ‘Oh, I got punched,’ and then kind of the fallback from that and the reaction to that to really sell that, ‘Oh, I got hurt,’ even though I didn’t.”

This reaction he has is the other reason stage fighting can look so real. Actors bring the final piece of the puzzle as they groan in agony or stare at their foe with determination. By acting like they are truly in a high-stakes moment, the audience feels the high stakes within themselves. 

Robin Hood has a large variety of weapons used: bows, swords, quarterstaffs, daggers, and even a fork! The thrill of a fight is never long forgotten in this show, as characters move quickly from fight to fight. Robin’s life is never truly off the line. 

WHS’s production of “Robin Hood” is set to be performed February 26th-28th and March 5th-6th at 7 PM, an adventurous tale intertwined with plenty of stage combat.