Director teaches real-world applications of stage conflict

Hark! Suddenly, the clash of rapiers from the other side of the garden wall! So where did Romeo learn to buckle his swash with such skill?

If our hero attended UW–Madison in the last three years, he might have had the expert assistance of Tony Simotes, associate professor of theatre and drama and director of the University Theatre (UT).

Simotes is a master fight choreographer whose stock in trade includes knives, swords, broadswords, the aforementioned rapiers, clubs, baseball bats, pens and every punch- and kick-producing part of the human body.

As it happens, Simotes is something of a pioneer in the field of fight direction. “Nothing like that was being taught anywhere when I was in college in the 1970s,” he says. “Today there are hundreds of fight directors in the United States and United Kingdom.”

Simotes first became acquainted with conflict, often-physical conflict, among the warehouses of his Greek-American father’s grocery business.

“They often called each other really vile names, pushed and shoved each other. But here’s the thing: Once they reached a deal they were the best of friends again,” Simotes says.

Simotes began his training as a circus assistant. Although he was and is quick and well-coordinated, he began to see that his future would not be juggling, unicycling or walking the wire. “I was pretty good but not really good,” he says.

In the ensuing years of driving a cab and working in restaurants, Simotes networked and eventually met the right people, notably his mentor in stage fight choreography, the renowned P.H. Burt.

During the last 30 years, Simotes has accrued ample experience in the stage, screen and television trifecta, both as an actor and fight coach. Today his vita lists credits with theater companies from Toronto to Orlando, Brisbane (Australia) to Simsbury (Conn.), New York to Los Angeles. With Tina Packer he helped found Shakespeare and Co. in Massachusetts in the mid-1990s. He has trained law students at Florida State University to present themselves effectively at trials.

Some of Simotes’ past students include Val Kilmer, Mark Lynn Baker, Jerry Burns. You may have seen Simotes in the films “Father of the Bride II,” “Indictment,” “A Class Act,” Terminator II,” “Pacific Heights,” “Alien Nation,” “Maid to Order” and others. There’s a framed photograph in Simotes’ windowless, subterranean office in Vilas Hall of him as

drummer Buddy Rich in the HBO miniseries on Frank Sinatra. Since his arrival in Madison, he has coached or appeared in (or both) productions at American Players Theatre and the Madison Rep as well as UW–Madison’s UT.

Actually, it’s kind of hard to believe Simotes is in the business of staging fights. He’s so … nice, such an affable fellow, so kindly. It’s impossible not to like him. Listens extremely well. Never interrupts in conversation. When it’s his turn to talk, he tells wonderful stories.

Here’s one:

“A man with a knife attacked a former student of mine in New York City one night. My student said that in those chaotic and scary few seconds he remembered what we had talked about in class about violence on stage, and what the actor goes through in creating a violent scene. He took stock of the perpetrator and was able to recognize that the aggressor was more nervous that he was, and so was able to avoid bloodshed, perhaps even save his own life.”

Simotes says he hopes that what he teaches in his classes — this semester it’s an introduction to acting — reverberates into the very fabric of life itself, as it did with his former student in New York.

“I teach the mechanics of punches, kicks, throws, beatings, strangulation and lots of slapstick and physical comedy, but the real message is how we can avoid these things in real life,” he says. “We, as actors, try to understand what drives a character — the more the actor understands what the playwright has given the character, and the more the actor relates personal experiences to the physical text, the more the audience responds to the play on a profound level.”

Indeed, its link to psychology played a central role in drawing Simotes into fight choreography. Although a good deal of research already has been done about the effects of violent programming on audiences, far fewer studies have investigated the repercussions on actors of staging violence. During the past year, the Graduate School awarded Simotes funding to record some initial impressions. In so doing he collaborated with scholars in theater, psychology and physiology.

“There’s a part of the brain that can’t distinguish between real and pretend violence,” he says, citing the amplified adrenaline rush that accompanies both participation in and viewing of a violent act.

“What I think we need is a mechanism to put violence in an emotional context,” he says, something that plays with violence usually do well.

Real life often is not so accommodating. Simotes says that he’s come to believe that some individuals “acquire a taste for violence because there’s no way to come down from a violent act. Prisoners often allude to that fact,” he says.

And so after rehearsals or classes that include a fight or two, Simotes is careful to incorporate exercises so the actors or students can experience something positive coming out of the swordplay or fisticuffs.

This is particularly important for audiences to remember as they leave the theater emotionally satisfied by their theatrical experience.

“At the end of a play, the curtain comes down and the people applaud and are able to go home at peace. This is because the artist has stepped into the fire for the rest of us,” he says.

In addition to teaching his acting class this semester, Simotes also will be working on the inaugural Wisconsin Wrights project, in which UT will produce plays by emerging Wisconsin writers during the summer season. Bradley “West Wing” Whitford has signed up as one of the judges.

Simotes conceives of the project as a vehicle for the university to encourage and nourish new artists.

“I think a university should be a place of originality,” Simotes says. “We should welcome new voices.”

For more information on the project, visit http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/theatre. new-play-project.htm. Information on UT’s spring season is available at http://www.utmadison.com/.