Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: Theater and Dance

Media Credit: Raymond Starin Joey Ford (left) and Andrew Umphrey (right) rehearse the climactic fight between Prince Hamlet and Laertes in Shakespeare's play "Hamlet." Ford plays Hamlet while Umphrey plays Laertes in MSU's upcoming production of the play.

Media Credit: Raymond Starin Fight Master Richard Raether spent last week at MSU helping create and direct the fight scene near the end of "Hamlet."

More than 25 years ago, Richard Raether had a role in a theater production that called for a minor scuffle during one scene. The scuffle didn't turn out to be minor for Raether, who was on the receiving end of an errant elbow during a rehearsal and wound up with a broken nose.

"I thought, 'there's got to be a better way of doing this!'" Raether recalled.

Raether discovered he wasn't the only actor who had suffered injuries during plays involving physical roles or scenes. "A lot of people were getting hurt because of bad teaching techniques," he said.

Raether became involved in stage combat and began working with J. Allen Suddeth, a director in New York. He later worked on such soap operas as "Guiding Light" and "One Life to Live" and started giving workshops on stage combat. Today he is one of 10 Fight Masters certified by the Society of American Fight Directors, meaning he is an expert in safely staging realistic-looking fights and preventing the same type of injury he once suffered. He is trained in eight weapons disciplines: unarmed, single sword, rapier/dagger, broadsword, sword/shield, small sword, quarterstaff and knife.

Raether, who teaches at Rockford College in Rockford, Ill., and runs a theater company, brought his expertise to Minnesota State last week, working with cast members of the upcoming MSU production of "Hamlet" and giving one-day seminars to other MSU Theatre students.

"Audiences don't want to come see something fake and phony looking," said Raether, who has also staged fights at such places as the Guthrie Theater and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. "They're getting more sophisticated and want to see something real."

And unlike film, stage actors don't have the luxury of stunt people, different camera angles, multiple takes and the editing room. They have only one opportunity on stage to impress the audience.

"It's the greatest concentration exercise there is for an actor," Raether said.

"Hamlet" provides some additional challenges for Raether and director Paul Hustoles. Shakespeare provides no description of the climactic duel near the end of the play other than "they play," meaning it's up to Raether to develop the fight and fill in the details. He and cast members Joey Ford (Hamlet) and Andrew Umphrey (Laertes) trained extensively last week, including a four-hour session Monday when they choreographed the entire duel.

"We started off slow, learned what the moves were, figured out the motivation behind each move and eventually increased the speed a little," said Ford, who noted it's important to "stay in the moment" during a rehearsed duel. "You can't think ahead," he said, comparing it to a receiver who takes his eyes off the football a second too soon and drops it.

Raether doesn't limit himself to choreographing spectacular fights, either. He noted that contemporary plays feature "all kinds of violence," including violent acts as simple as tussling and throwing or taking a punch. "It's those little things," he said. "If you don't know how to do it correctly, you're going to end up hurting yourself."

He cites as an example one incident in 1989, when he was still in New York working on the play "The Common Pursuit." A character had to take a punch in one scene and wasn't interested in Raether's advice on how to take it and fall to the ground. "Let me just do it my way," Raether remembers the actor saying.

Two weeks later, and only days before the play was to open, Raether got a phone call informing him the actor had "a bruise the size of a football" on his hip and was limping noticeably. "I ended up having to go to the props guy to get soft bags for him to fall on because his bruise was so bad," Raether said.

Raether's residency at MSU was made possible through the Nadine B. Andreas Guest Artist program. In addition, he and Hustoles have known each other for more than 25 years. The two met when Hustoles was running the Mule Barn Theatre in Missouri in the early 1980s and hired Raether as an actor. ("It was literally a barn that used to house mules," Raether said.)

They only had sporadic contact until years later when Raether was working with the Guthrie Theatre and Hustoles had season tickets there.

"I literally opened the Guthrie program one year and there was his name," Hustoles said. "So I looked him up and sure enough, he was in town, and we reconnected at that point."

Hustoles said he, Ford and Umphrey would continue to polish the fight scene until the opening of the play. Ford indicated one of the biggest challenges he and Umphrey still face is keeping the correct tempo when dueling.

"We try to do it at a specific speed," he said. "Sometimes we fight too fast - it doesn't seem too fast to us, but it'll be too fast for the audience to react to."

While Raether deals largely with weapons, he stressed that the important element was not the violence itself.

"It's not the weapons," he said. "It's the story."


Derek Wehrwein is the Reporter variety editor

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