ALISON de Burgh is well placed to defend the role of women in a male-dominated world - she is the UK's first female fight director.

Audiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan Theatre in Stratford can see her work from tonight when As You Like It opens.

She has choreographed the big set piece at the beginning of the play, when the villain of the piece tries to have his brother, Orlando, murdered by Charles, a wrestler.

"Safety is a big issue because at the end of the fight the other actors are meant to think he is seriously injured," says 34-year-old Alison.

She is also responsible for ensuring any minor scuffles and slaps are performed in such a way that no harm befalls the actors or the audience.

"It comes down to insurance these days. If there is anything where health and safety comes in the fight director is brought in," she says.

It is not Alison's first experience of working for the RSC. She was fight director for last year's much-panned version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

"You may ask what fighting goes on in A Midsummer Night's Dream?," asks Alison, before explaining that anytime there are complex moves such as actors lifting another actor or doing something potentially dangerous, it is a requirement of the actors' union Equity that a fight director takes charge.

An apparently innocuous slap, she says, is a dangerous thing. "The worst you can do is burst someone's eardrum and they could end up with hearing problems."

There clearly is a demand for her skills, and those of the other 30-plus fight directors around the country.

Alison is currently working with the English National Opera on The Handmaid's Tale and last year arranged a 10-minute fight at the climax of Neil La Bute's play The Distance from Here at the Almeida in London.

She also had to show Hollywood heartthrob Jude Law how to hit someone with a stick when he performed Dr Faustus at the Young Vic.

"He was very sweet. He was very keen to get it right but was very reluctant to do it. I got him over it by hitting him first," says Alison.

Apart from her stage work, most of her time is spent passing on her skills to drama students at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where Sir Antony Sher, Minnie Driver and countless soap stars started out.

And her skills are pretty impressive. Apart from being a trained actress, she is a British Academy of Fencing coach, a former British ladies' long bow champion and a Royal Toxophilite, a member of a posh archery club.

As the first, and until recently only, female fight director, Alison has admits she has pushed herself harder and further to prove herself in what was previously an exclusively man's world.

"It's part of your training at drama school. Most plays have some sort of violence and I discovered I was quite good at violence," says Alison, tongue firmly in cheek.

Her long-term ambition is to get work in the movies "where the money is", though, for now she is happy to concentrate on stage work. And anyone sitting in the stalls who may wonder why a fight director is needed, should note Alison's cautionary tale about a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park.

During the big fight scene, a blade from one of the swords flew from its hilt and into the audience where it grazed a woman's face before embedding itself into the back of her seat. Two inches to the left and it could have killed her. "There's no danger like that in As You Like It, " adds Alison reassuringly.

As You Like It is in rep at the Swan Theatre until November 8. Tickets area available on 0870 609 1110.

Details of the RSC programme on the RSC website.