Chapter 11
The Illusion of Violence

The Disappearing Knap

If there is one technique that sets stage combat apart from any other discipline it is the use of the knap. The knap is an integral part of any given technique that involves a non-contact strike between performers. Practicing the knap to get just the right sound for a given moment and make it repeatable in performance takes time and care when considering the elements of volume and quality of sound for a strike. However, all of this good work in creating a full, vivid, and resonant moment of violence can disappear if the hands of the performer seem to do something unusual or unnatural. We must take care to make the act of knapping as fluid and seamless as possible. It is the vital part of the art that must never be seen. Knaps for the audience can never exist because they do not exist for the characters, only for the actor.

How do we achieve this? First start by simply clapping your hands together in a way that is relaxed and natural for you. Listen to the sound they make immediately. Think about the elements of volume and quality. Do you have a loud clap? A soft one? Is it a sharp sound? A dull one? Is it tinny or low in pitch? Do your hands sting after a few claps? How do you hold your hands when you clap? Are they angled? Are the palms slightly cupped or rigid? Do the hands come together directly in front of the torso or do they feel more comfortable slightly to the side?

After you have self-observed your clap, now begin to experiment with different ways in which you can clap your hands. Try striking the heel of your palm with your fingers while listening to the sound and feeling the sensation. Now try the back of one hand slapping the palm of the other. Try a clap that comes together and bounces back the way it came in. Now try one where the hands pass by each other and exchange positions. The possibilities are truly endless. Only by experimenting will you come to discover what way of knapping will be right for you. Knaps are like snowflakes, no two are quite the same. Even with a similar type of knap, say a clap knap for example, each time the knap is performed it will differ slightly in execution, feel, or sound. Finding the knaps that work for you is something only you can discover through individual practice and constant self-observation.

The clap knap is not the only knap available to a performer. The body knap is another useful and perhaps even more versatile knap technique available to the performer. The body knap is similar to the clap knap except instead of one hand striking the other, one hand strikes another part of the performer's body. The location of the knap could be anywhere. However, one will find that the most resonant, comfortable, and repeatable places on the body will be the regions with the most muscle mass. The pectorals, abdominals, latissimus dorsi, and outer gluteals typically make for some of the best locations. Additionally, these sounds can be made individually by a performer on his or her own body or they may be made between performers when one performer's hand strikes the hand or major muscle group of another performer. This will result in a shared knap. Whatever the technique of knap used experimentation is the key to finding the most appropriate knap for whatever is most appropriate for the violent interaction, most able to be heard, and most easily executed by the performer making the knap.

Making the knap seem not to exist can be helped most in the staging of the moment of violence. Typically the performer who is knapping should be positioned in such a way that he or she is facing away from the audience for the briefest of moments while the knap is happening. This should coincide with the moment of the strike. The standard staging for a strike in a proscenium theater where the audience is on one side of the room and the performers are on the other side is in the "offset" position. Here the performer receiving the blow (the receiver) and making the knap is facing completely upstage. The other performer who is performing the strike (the operator) should be facing downstage and upstage of the receiver. Also, the head of the operator should be visible over either the right or left shoulder of the receiver. Be certain not to end up in the "stacked" position as the body of the receiver who is downstage will eclipse the face of operator. This position allows the audience to see the character performing the aggressive action while using the masking of the receiver's body to hide the knap.

All immediate response to this kind of staging, especially from young directors, is that it breaks the cardinal rule of theatre that everyone who was ever in a play in grade school learned: never turn your back to the audience. This of course makes sense because when our parents came to see us in the school play they wanted to see our faces not our backs. Aside from placating parents everywhere with this rule, it serves a deeper conceptual purpose as well. The theatre, after all, is a place where things are supposed to be revealed. We go to see the "show." Naturally we want to see all things related to the telling of the story. Anything that is foreign or out of place takes the observer out of the narrative flow and the world of the play, Things must remain consistent throughout not necessarily between the outside world and the theatrical world but rather between the elements within the theatrical world that is created. This is part of the beauty and the madness of the theatre; anything is permissible as long as it is logically harmonious with the other elements in the play. Whatever rules those are should and must be followed. We can make up whatever rules we want as long as they tell the story in a clever, artfully satisfying way.

Let us assume that one of these rules is "hide the knap," If this is so, then how can we follow this guideline and still make sense of a particular violent moment considering we must hide a portion of the physical storytelling that we should ostensibly want to reveal?

As you may have noticed the pictures and the videos of techniques in later chapters are shown at two angles. The primary reason for this is to show the space that is necessary to avoid actually striking an actor while also giving a sense of how to optimally stage a technique to effectively convey that violent contact has been made (refer to Chapter 5 Audience Relationship (The Third Partner) for more on this). One perspective is meant to reveal the nuts and bolts of the technique for the actor, the other to illuminate the desired effect on an observing audience. Another reason for showing this staging is to start to understand where we may hide the knap (for more on the particular information on performing these refer to the section on knaps contained in Chapter 10). As is evident through the pictures, this upstage/downstage "offset" position where the person receiving the hit is typically downstage is maximal for hiding any knap. This staging allows the person who is being hit to easily manipulate his or her hands in front of the body to most easily create the desired sound. The hands can access each other, the major muscles groups of the pectorals, abdominals, and even the inner thigh quite easily in this position.

However, as has been mentioned before, remaining in this upstage/downstage offset position is dissatisfying for the audience because of previously ingrained notions of theatrical staging as well as the desire to see what is happening. In order to satisfy audience expectation, reveal reasons for the violent interaction, and obscure the knap we must not linger in the upstage/downstage offset position. Rather, we must move through these positions. This can be achieved though many means, not the least of which is clever staging. The blocking of a scene leading up to a violent moment must not be taken from simply the line before the hit. The genesis of the desire to hit typically starts growing many scenes before. Going back at least half a page or even a full page in the script is necessary to investigate not only how the emotional life is beginning to change between the characters but also how the physical interaction alters leading up to the strike. The pattern of changing body postures in each character should lead naturally to the moment of violence.

This is easy to say and much more difficult to do. Too often I have seen an excellent scene full of life and spontaneity suddenly become stolid and wooden without warning. The reason would invariably be that the actors were shedding the interactions of the characters and transitioning into "safe-stage-combat-technique-mode." Movement becomes blocking; acting becomes technique. This is also typically accompanied by a slight ritardando in the tempo of the scene. The audience can see and feel the hit coming from a mile away. Ideally we should want the hit to happen suddenly and spontaneously without warning. If it is a surprise for the character it should be a surprise for the audience as well. If the actors and director think about the staging of the hit being the end point, the pinnacle that they want to reach for a certain moment, then they can more easily start to investigate how to get there naturally and logically using the moments that lead up to it.

A simple trick to use here in staging is to throw in a push or grab right before the hit. This allows the actors to still face each other in profile and then use movement to get themselves into the upstage/downstage offset position to perform the hit. This does not necessarily mean that the performers are actually moving while the hit is being performed. While this is a possible choice, performing non-contact strikes while in motion may muddy the clarity of the strike and is also much more difficult to perform in terms of precision and safety than a strike that happens with the performers stationary. Keeping the feet stable and grounded during the moment of the strike will help promote maximum precision of the technique and also allow more time to find the necessary spacing to keep the actors from injuring each other. In this position the knap can be done without being in clear view of the audience.

It is at this moment that the knap comes into its own. The sound should be clear and precise. The audience should respond not only to the violent motion but the sharp, staccato sound being produced as well. The hands should remain relaxed throughout and completely gestural before and after the strike. It is only at the moment of the actual knap that these hands are performing a technique. This should only take a fraction of a second. Throughout the rest of the violent moment, the hands of the receiver must be doing something as exact as the hands of the operator.

The operator has so many things on which to focus: the target of the strike, the shape of the hand performing the violence, the muscular tension necessary to perform the action. There is typically so much emphasis placed on performing the action of the technique we can lose the specificity of what is involved in receiving the action. This is not too surprising since people, especially performers, can be obsessed with performing an action and performing it as well as possible. But we forget that in this particular instance this interaction is a shared moment. The reaction is necessary to complement the action. We can't have one without the other. If one is clearly defined but the other is not then the system as a whole breaks down. The continuation of the story being told is as much if not more so about the results of what changes after violence has been done as it is about the why and how one person chooses to hurt another human being. Attention to the physical life of the person reacting is necessary to aid in the continuation of the story.

In order to move through the moment and not have the performers remain in a static but a dynamic upstage/downstage offset position they need to open up and reveal the picture. This is easily done by the performer receiving the hit moving his or her body in the direction of the force of the hit. Naturally the part of the body that has been targeted (most likely the head) moves in the direction of the strike. Once that part of the body moves first, the rest of the body naturally follows. Be mindful of how far the head moves in relation to the strike. The neck is a very flexible but also delicate instrument. Repeated sudden movements with the head and neck can lead to pain and discomfort in a very short period of time. Always make sure that the head does not turn past 45 degrees from neutral (looking straight ahead). Once the head reaches this maximum angle of 45 degrees from looking straight ahead one should relax the neck muscles and allow the head to return to neutral. Also, the shoulders of the body can turn in the direction that the head is moving to relieve any strain on the neck. What ends up happening is a spiraling action down the spine that starts and ends in the neutral position. What should be different is the distance between the performers, The feet obviously have a role in this as they move in such a way as to keep the performer balanced through the reaction while giving the illusion of being off-balance. The distance or measure between the performers should have gone from a closed position in order to hide the knap and the space for the strike to an open position where they can carry on the rest of the scene. This increased distance also helps communicate to the audience the transference of force that is very important in creating the illusion of violence.

Now of course one can overdo it with reactions. All too often an actor receives a punch and it sends him or her halfway across the stage. Overreactions break the illusion of violence. Likewise, under-reacting or under-performing a strike drains the moment of any consequence. The actors must always walk the line between being faithful to the reality of the violence while animating the action in such a way as to make it crystal clear to an observing audience exactly what the action was and the effect of how it was received.

Naturally, a strike that is thrown with great force (such as a 9 on a scale of 1–10) should be paired with a reaction of equal magnitude. Likewise, a strike that has less force behind it (say at a value of 3) should be paired with a reaction that moves the receiver in a less forceful manner. Even if the hit is very light for whatever the reason there still must be a reaction! If there is a scene with a small woman who weighs 95 pounds with a large man who weighs 225 pounds and the woman must slap the man in the face or punch him in the gut, the man must still react both physically and emotionally in some way. There must always be a reaction and a consequence to any action of violence so that the relationship between the two characters then changes. In reality perhaps the man would not budge at all because the force generated from the woman wouldn't be sufficient to do so. However, if there is no reaction there is diminished readability of the interaction to the audience. It is not enough for the performers to have it in their minds how they imagine the interaction is supposed to be. They must show it to the audience.

The relationship between the action and the reaction is perhaps the most vital aspect of the illusion of violence. The magnitude of the reaction must be commensurate to the magnitude of the action. Whenever there is a discrepancy between the values each performer gives to a particular strike the effect invariably becomes comical. Now if this is the intent of the interaction, say for slapstick comedy, then that is something the actors can certainly play. But for the bulk of violent interactions shown in theatre and film, particularly dramatic work, any sense of humor during the action of the strike and reaction to it undercuts the gravitas of the moment.

The illusion of violence is not just about the austerity or severity of a situation gone awry. It is also about wonder. This wonder should occur on two fronts. The first front should be the technical wonder of, "How did they do that? Did she really hit him?" In the back of their minds, the audience knows it's all a sham. Those people on stage or on screen aren't really who they claim to be, nor is any of this really happening in such a way that affects the rest of the world. It is a closed system. But it is a system in which the audience is now complicit. In the moment of witnessing the violence the audience should never think, "I know how they did that." In this case the man behind the curtain is seen and the illusion is broken. The skill involved in executing the technique must be so precise in terms of specificity of the target attacked, proper angle to show the action of the violence and yet hide the tricks we use to keep the actors safe, and matched magnitude of force between action and reaction that the audience is compelled to believe what happened on stage was absolutely true in that moment.

The second front should be the wonder of, "How could one human being do that to another human being?" This does not mean that the audience should not know the reason for the violence. There should always be a reason for the violence depicted in theatre and film regardless of whether we as performers or the audience think that the reason for violence is a justifiable one. It could be completely unjustified, but we could still clearly see the reason why a character punches, slaps, kicks, or gouges the eyes out of another character. We enact violence in this way to examine it fully. We wonder at it to attempt to understand the human capacity for violence. If a moment of violence is enacted with sincerity of intent, skill of technique, and mindfulness of consequence then in that moment the audience should believe, even if only for a fraction of a second, that those performers are characters doing harm to one another.