Fight director Paul Dennhardt researches weaponry, stage combat

Fight director Paul Dennhardt conducts painstaking research so audiences might flinch or gasp at an on-stage punch or a fatal swordfight, but will be able to applaud when the actors return to take their bows.

Hundreds of books on weaponry and stage combat fill his office shelves, books he refers to often depending on what kind of fighting an upcoming theatre production needs and from what era. A Theatre faculty member since 2001 and a certified fight director and teacher of stage combat by the Society of American Fight Directors, Dennhardt teaches Illinois State theatre students physical approaches to acting. He is the resident fight director for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and serves as a movement consultant for productions in the School of Theatre.

“I do research in historical swordplay or, sometimes, historical firearms,” he said. “More and more, there are wonderful manuals that were written in the 1600s but have been preserved, translated and made available to us to explore historical swordplay and violence. All Shakespeare gives us is ‘they fight’ and 'Tybalt falls’,” he said. “We take the techniques in these books, which were intended for actual combat and were deadly, and see if we can change them to allow actors to perform them and create the illusion of violence."

“What the actors are actually doing,” Dennhardt said, “is telling a story with violent physical acting, when words will no longer suffice.”

The swordplay most people have seen – in movies – barely represented an actual swordfight, because Hollywood’s swashbuckling era was staged by fencing masters. What viewers used to see was swordplay as sport, not as battle. But fight director William Hobbs first used historical swordplay with weapons that had the heft and function of actual swords in "The Three Musketeers" (1973) and a year later "The Four Musketeers." Dennhardt enjoys showing clips from Hobbs’ work in Ridley Scott’s 1977 movie “The Duellists,” in which the historically accurate weaponry and unromanticized, violent fighting style changed movie swordplay forever.

The fight choreography bulb lit up over Dennhardt’s head when he was a 27-year-old graduate student at Western Illinois University. An MFA directing candidate, he took a stage combat course and said, “Oh, I like this.” He completed the directing degree, but headed directly to the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD), where he worked as an apprentice learning from established fight directors throughout the country.

“My professional career got started by working as an apprentice,” Dennhardt said. “I believe in the value of mentorship. You have to remember that before universities started offering artist training, artists did apprenticeships, learning by working with and observing others who were masters in their fields.”

A native of Moline, Ill., Dennhardt was born to move on stage. His parents were touring professional dancers - “The Dancing (Mary Lou and Larry) Dennhardts,” - who settled in Moline and were longtime dance teachers. The Quad Cities theatre community knew Paul and his family very well.

Over the years, Dennhardt has worked as a fight director/movement consultant at many nationally and regionally recognized venues, including the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Dallas Theater Center, Joseph Papp Public Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Madison Repertory Theatre and others. In addition to his certification as a fight director, he is certified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique by the American Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique.

To add to his arsenal, Dennhardt is planning a sabbatical to study the Fitzmaurice vocal technique to supplement his teaching as a movement and acting teacher and fight director. The Fitzmaurice vocal technique will help him teach students to create vocal violence.

“When blows are struck on stage, they have to be accompanied by the sounds of pain or anger or anguish,” he said. “In film, you can dub the vocals, the responses, later, but on stage you have to create them now. The sounds have to be supplied live by actors. You have to be skilled enough to get it right the first time, because if the timing is off between a fist crossing in front of a face, the face snapping and the reaction sound, the illusion is gone. Then the audience knows nothing is real. When it’s the most heightened moment of conflict in a play, you don’t want the audience thinking, 'oh, it’s not really happening.'”

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