[0:00]My name is Kate Waters. I'm better known as Combat Kate in the business and I'm the fight director on Lord of the Flies.
[0:11]So a fight director is responsible for the physical violence within the play. So it is kind of like a dance, but um, it's a violent dance.
[0:26]I don't know when I walk into a rehearsal room what I'm going to do, but I know the story, I know the structure of the story, and I know what perhaps the character's motivation is. So it's a real sort of collaborative process where the actors and the director are all involved in in the process. As we're going, obviously my job is also to keep the health and safety element of that as well. But I'm not a health and safety officer, I'm a fight director and a creative first. The fighting in Lord of the Flies is pivotal to the story, and anyone that's read the book, which I'm sure lots of people have, there's a savagery to where they go to. Perhaps they haven't eaten, they haven't drunk, they're dehydrated and hungry. Their senses are all over the place. And so the the violence comes from from that herd mentality that where they're they're not thinking logically, where one person wants power over the other person, and um words have failed and um violence happens. It's pretty grim, but it's vital for the storytelling. So for me, I don't compromise the story for anything. So it shouldn't be comfortable for the audience to watch, it should be heartbreaking for the audience to watch. I have done two other productions of Lord of the Flies, and obviously this one is different because we've got a gender mix in it. We've also got actors with um special requirements. So it it's a complete, for me it's a completely new piece. Different director, different everything. But I think it's really, really important. I'm a female fight director. And I have a female Ralph, who's playing her as a female, and I think it's really important that there makes no difference to how they move physically. Because I'm looking at the actor. I'm looking at the actor and the character and how do we want to portray that. I hope with when everything else is around it with music, lights, and everything else, it's going to, you know, it's going to be really special, but you have to get, you have to get it right in the bareness of a rehearsal room, because it doesn't matter what goes around it, if it's not right, it won't look very good. So if you get it right in the bareness of everything in a space that is giving you nothing, then everything is an add-on, it's a extra gift really.
