Fighting

At the heart of His Dark Materials is a titanic struggle between good and evil, fought out between the forces of the Authority and death on one side, and Lord Asriel’s alliance on the other. It’s no surprise then, that the plays call for many fight scenes, from Lyra taking on neighbourhood children in Oxford, to the all-out war of the worlds. Fight arranger Terry King has a crucial part to play. He works closely with the cast and the directing team including Assistant Director Matt Wilde, and Associate Director and Choreographer Aletta Collins.

In his interview Terry King explains that good fight-arranging is a critical acting skill. Its essence is all about creating the illusion of conflict.

The complexity of fight-arranging can be daunting. In interview Danny Sapani who plays Iorek Byrnison, talks about his part in the climactic bear fight in which he engages Iofur (Chris Larkin) in a battle to the death. The scene has more than 150 separate choreographed movements.

Each scene makes different demands upon the fight arranger. In the rehearsals for the scene in which the Church’s representative, Fra Pavel, orders Mrs. Coulter to torture a witch to force her to reveal a secret name, Terry King has to show the cast how to create sounds which are critical to the scene’s dramatic impact, without giving the game away to the audience. Inika Leigh-Wright, who plays the tortured witch, tells us how this feels from the performer's point of view.