Terry King - Fight Arranger Terry King has had a vital role to play in bringing His Dark Materials and Henry V to the National Theatre stage. Both feature fighting throughout, from small personal encounters to full-scale battles. The former production features fabulous creatures ranged against each other in an epic struggle of good versus evil, the latter a war in modern dress fought between England and France, but with strong contemporary resonance. Each demands the best use of Terry’s skill which he describes as getting actors to cooperate to create the illusion of conflict. He describes stage fighting as an acting skill, ‘a particularly coarse kind of acting’. If it goes wrong it can lessen the audience’s pleasure in the production and undermine its credibility. When it goes right, it can add so much in the way of drama and narrative drive. Terry sees his role as making sure the actors are comfortable with each other so that they can concentrate on the acting. |  | |
