How to Sell a Stage Slap
We’ve told you how to actually hit someone . But here’s how to pretend to hit someone. First, advice from The Good Fight and Broadway actress Christine Baranski about a dead-end game and a sequel.
Hold your free hand
Baransky describes that he actually got a slap in the face, but it is harder to sell than it actually is. The trick, she says, is to keep your finger on the pulse. However, when she pats herself lightly, she mentions that even that can leave her cheek red for a while.
Match the slap response
A stage slap is a test of the communication and collaboration of two actors: everything has to coincide between a slap and a slap in the face. When that matches, you can get away with a lot. Baransky briefly mentions this, but let’s look further.
If you watch the video below, everything will look fake until the last demo. It’s like a magic trick, and the magic is in teamwork.
Fake, fake, fake
In some productions, they think that in the case of minor violence, they can just do it for real. “Eh, just give me a slap in the face, I can take it!” – says the actor. Nobody wants to be a weakling who can’t stand a slap in the face. But, as actor and fight director Ned Donovan writes, this is asking for trouble .
Do the same slap eight nights a week to play it to its fullest, he says, and you seriously risk something going wrong, someone breaking your eardrum, leaving a mark or starting to hate your partner.
Donovan recommends hiring a Fighting Director to heighten the realism. If that’s not in your budget, check out more of these fake slap techniques online to increase your realism. Use those angles, and if you’re performing for video, trust post-processing to get a meatier flavor than you could ever safely achieve with a real hit.
The main thing is to avoid direct contact. Stage combat choreographer Richard Pallasiol, owner of the theatrical weapons shop Weapons of Choice, writes that “a contact strike is inherently unsafe.” He stresses the risk of injury to the eardrum from an inappropriate impact, noting that repeated performances increase the risk of this error to a dangerous level.
So set that border first and then worry about realism. Unless you’re Christine Baranski, who has earned the right to burst an eardrum or two.