Guest Blog: Charlie Cameron On Stage Fighting at Shakespeare's Rose Theatre

Throughout my career, I've been desperate to fight, and yet it always seemed something reserved for the boys and the men. During one of my first jobs, playing Wendy in Peter Pan, I was determined to get in at least one sneaky kick to a passing pirate's shin.

And I was outraged when I played Anybodies in West Side Story that the original Jerome Robbins choreography only ever allowed her to be an onlooker, despite her first line: "I was a smash in that fight". Perhaps it was too risqué for the 1950s audience to see a girl fighting on stage.

But we are now in a new era of kickass girls: bring on Killing Eve, bring on GLOW, bring on Shakespeare's Rose Theatre Summer Season in Blenheim and York. I am getting to fight for the first time ever and it is...well, bloody terrifying, to be honest.

Be careful what you wish for. Trying to remember the sequence of the fight choreography is a bit like trying to remember your lines, except you might die if you forget. OK, fine, you won't die, but it's hardly going to end well.

I have been in companies when an extra bit of adrenaline has led to a couple of actors ending up in A&E. This was when I started not to mind so much that I was an onlooker. But here I am, sword in hand, running towards one of the gentlest men I have ever met, who as luck would have it happens to be excellent at stage combat.

We're rehearsing the final fight scene in Macbeth, when all hell brakes loose. The fight director, Jonathan Holby, has filled the stage with every available actor possible. Jonathan and his accomplice, Kiel, teach the choreography, starting with the actors far stage right and methodically working their way across the stage. I am the furthest stage left. I get to watch the first half of the stage fighting and it looks amazing. My eyes are overwhelmed - and that's only half the stage at half the speed.

Apparently screaming and shouting at the top of your voice isn't good for it, especially when you then have to deliver a beautiful soliloquy to an audience of 900 in the open air. But fear not: Yvonne, our voice coach, is on hand to throw bucketloads of technique at us. The only thing is, my war scream involves no acting - it is pure terror disguised as aggression, and although I definitely don't want to lose my voice, I am currently more preoccupied with losing a finger, or an eye.

When we finish the whole sequence, I am buzzing. Oh God! I think I might have actually enjoyed that! Quite a lot. The other women dotted around the sea of men fighting are epic - they are all fierce and strong and skilled and I am desperate to hold my own with them.

At one point, I have to plunge my sword towards Lexi's (playing Angus) stomach. Although my simplest move, it's the one I'm having the most trouble with. Kiel and Lexi are being very patient despite the fact that I keep purposefully missing and aiming a foot to her side. I can't bear to aim for her actual stomach as she is an actual human, despite her reassurance that she will dodge it and parry me off.

The key difference between stage fighting and real fighting, besides actually killing each other, is eye contact. If we always make eye contact, we can know what the other person is thinking. If they look a bit confused and terrified, it's a sure way to know they have forgotten something and need to slow it down a bit.

All in all, it's exhilarating and I cannot wait to be doing it every night. So, I might get the odd bloody knuckle, but that's nothing compared with what ballet dancers' toes have to go through.

The best thing about Jonathan's fights is that the movements don't come from what he would do as a fighter, but what the individual characters would do; their physical actions are driven by who they are as people and what emotional state they are in. This means that the narrative keeps being told even when the dialogue stops.

In the opening fight, Adam Kane, who is perfectly cast as Malcom, hardly gets to cross swords, as all the other Thanes swoop in to protect him. Before anyone's opened their mouth, it's clear who the different characters are. This is also what makes some of the fights heartbreaking. Banquo and Lady MacDuff are both excellent fighters - their weakness is in trying to save their children.

Across all the eight plays that are being done by Shakespeare's Rose Theatre, I doubt two characters will ever die in the same way. They are some of the most breathtaking, emotional, creative, moving fights I've ever seen.

Find full dates and venues for shows at Shakespeare's Rose Theatre here

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