Since the explosion of the #MeToo Movement in 2017, theatrical intimacy work has increasingly made its way into educational theatre environments. Unsurprisingly, this has created a surge in individuals wanting to learn theatrical intimacy best practices, especially among undergraduate students. While some programs allow students to do research projects on the subject, other programs seem hesitant to allow undergraduates to gain facilitation experience and training with theatrical intimacy work. One source of this hesitancy is the Intimacy Choreographers, Coordinators, and Educators Resource Group on Facebook, which is “a space for Intimacy Choreographers, Coordinators, and Educators to talk shop! Participation in this group is not a substitute for formal training and experience” (“Intimacy Choreographers”). With over two thousand members, this Facebook group frequently asks the membership questions relating to difficult situations in rehearsal, recommendations for training programs, and theatrical intimacy protocols. While other Facebook groups exist for intimacy professionals, this group is by far the largest and has frequent posts and activity.
On September 17, 2024, a post in this group sparked a flurry of strong opinions regarding undergraduate participation and facilitation in theatrical intimacy work. Members’ concerns behind their rationale for preventing undergraduate students from staging theatrical intimacy are many: the common undergraduate’s prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed; relationships between students could complicate intimacy staging; students will abuse their power in the position; and the belief that using undergraduate students is a methodology to avoid paying someone qualified to enact theatrical intimacy work (“Intimacy Choreographers”). Anecdotally, I have also had intimacy professionals state to me that it is an age issue, and that individuals should not be staging intimacy unless they have been in the profession for five years and/or are at least thirty years old.
While the concerns of many of these qualified intimacy professionals are completely reasonable, I argue that there are ways to enable undergraduate students to explore beginner-level intimacy staging while minimizing the potential for harm within the student body. In this article, I will outline the methodology I have implemented at the Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma to enable undergraduate students to explore beginner-level intimacy work in controlled, supervised environments. Although this possibility takes time and effort to implement, I believe that it reduces fear around theatrical intimacy and assists in reinforcing consent culture throughout the School of Drama rather than at an individual level.
The first step necessary to activate this practice is to ensure that there is a qualified full-time faculty member to oversee intimacy practices and protocols within an educational theatre setting. I am in my fourth year as assistant professor of movement, intimacy, and violence at the School of Drama. In this time, I have worked within the school to create and standardize a Concern Resolution Path inspired by the Chicago Theatre Standards to foster pathways for raising concerns (“Chicago Theatre Standards”) and for standardizing intimacy audition information and callback protocols. I have also created two new classes related to intimacy: Staging Theatrical Intimacy and Violence and Intimacy for Design and Production (previously called Violence and Intimacy for Stage Managers). In addition, the School of Drama has opted in and maintained a Heartland Intimacy Design & Training’s Institutional Subscription, which allows all students, faculty, and staff to access theatrical intimacy resources and create assignments related to the content at any time (“Institutional Subscription”). This multipronged approach grants undergraduate students access to theatrical intimacy best practices at a variety of intersections regardless of their area of emphasis within the School of Drama. By simply providing resources and information, we work toward an environment where consent culture is the norm rather than the exception.
To allow students to stage theatrical intimacy within the School of Drama, three criteria must be met:
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Students are only allowed to stage consensual intimacy.
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Students must be enrolled in or have already taken my staging theatrical intimacy class.
a. If the class is not offered in a given semester and the student would like to do intimacy work, they must sign up for a two-credit performance practicum as an accountability tool. -
The intimacy faculty member must attend and observe all intimacy rehearsals where the student is learning how to facilitate.
The most vital piece in enabling undergraduate students to stage theatrical intimacy in controlled, supervised environments is the upper-division elective course Staging Theatrical Intimacy. To enroll in the course, students must be of junior ranking or higher. Because the course is an elective, the pool of students who wish to engage with facilitation and theatrical training is significantly smaller than those of required courses taught in the curriculum; in the fall 2024 session of this course, there are only five students, whereas the previous session of the class contained seven students. Within the School of Drama, we have roughly one hundred majors, and about eighty of them are in the performance emphasis. Most of the students who take Staging Theatrical Intimacy are aspiring directors and educators who want to gain the skills of intimacy staging, while there are some students who wish to continue intimacy work professionally post-graduation. This elective course is three credit hours, which is a sizable commitment to learning and engaging in theatrical intimacy work. The course itself is structured like a laboratory setting where students can try, fail, and practice the delicate language of facilitation of intimacy work as well as navigate actor boundaries from student volunteers (and each other) for the class. Two projects students must complete in the course are consensual intimacy scenes that they stage during in-class rehearsals; one scene involves realistic intimacy, while the other requires the intimacy professional to create an innovative solution as if realistic intimacy were not possible (for example, a student staged an intimate scene between characters Tilly and Lilith in Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters by using action figures controlled by the actors as proxies for the intimate action). By the end of sixteen weeks, students have immersed themselves in sixty-four hours of intimacy training in class, as well as a significant amount of time outside of class reading a variety of intimacy texts and articles, writing reflections of their own processes, and, if they choose, spending time in rehearsals staging intimacy for department productions.
One of the final project options in Staging Theatrical Intimacy is to stage the intimacy for a School of Drama production, with the project equating to twenty percent of the student’s overall grade. To ensure their success both as a student intimacy professional and as student actors within the department, I curate in advance the options available to the aspiring intimacy professionals by discussing the opportunity with directors of each production to determine whether: a) the production would be open to an undergraduate gaining experience with their production; b) the intimacy within the production is at an appropriate difficulty level for a beginner intimacy professional to navigate; and c) that the actors (once cast in the show) are open to student intimacy professionals staging the intimacy. To prevent disclosure of sensitive data and to uphold FERPA regulations, only I (as the intimacy faculty member) handle the sensitive information that is stated in intimacy callback forms, both during auditions and within the casting room. While I do not allow the students to access this data, they do get practice in creating all necessary intimacy documentation for a fictional production of their choosing as an assignment within the class.
When a student chooses to serve as a given production’s intimacy professional, my goal is to allow the student to “ride the bike with training wheels on.” By attending rehearsals with the student, the student knows that there is always the safety net of the intimacy faculty if they are not quite sure how to word something, if they want to ensure that they covered all necessary steps before moving forward, or stepping out of the process if they feel that they are in over their heads. Rarely will I interject with a correction or an offering without being asked, as I want to fully empower the student to run the room. In practice, my role has often been reassurance; the student intimacy professional will check in with me on breaks and ask how they are doing and if there is anything they should do differently when break is over. I take copious notes during the process and document as many moments as I can, both positive and areas where they could improve. After each session, I facilitate a debrief with the entire theatrical intimacy class to hear the experience of their colleagues along with my observations; this gives the class the opportunity to learn from each other’s practices and get ideas as to how to facilitate when they are running the room.
The academic consequences for deliberately causing harm and difficulty in a School of Drama production are numerous; while there are clear academic consequences tied to the class grade (as well as the student’s overall GPA), misconduct regarding intimacy work could also result in students being put on probation. The stakes are high for taking on this role and responsibility as a student; as a result, I have yet to encounter misconduct issues or students deliberately causing harm in these roles. I have found the inverse to be true; other undergraduate students who know that an intimacy student is in the class will seek them out and ask for their help and guidance while they navigate scene work for other classes. Some ask the intimacy students to function as an outside eye to evaluate the aesthetics of the intimacy the two actors are building. In a sense, the intimacy students become ambassadors for intimacy best practices and can create additional support mechanisms beyond what the intimacy faculty member can feasibly do.
To close, I would like to revisit the arguments against undergraduate students facilitating intimacy and provide counterpoints based on the curriculum and structure provided at the School of Drama:
Point:
The common undergraduate student’s prefrontal cortex is not fully developed and therefore will not be capable of the deep critical thinking and emotional intelligence necessary for an intimacy professional.
Counterpoint:
It is true that, biologically, many undergraduate students do not have fully developed prefrontal cortexes. However, one of the benefits of learning how to facilitate and stage theatrical intimacy is in breaking the binary thinking of “right” and “wrong” to illustrate the many shades of gray in which intimacy work often lives. The opportunity to develop nuance in their approach and thinking will in turn improve the student’s critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills.
Point:
Relationships between students could complicate intimacy staging.
Counterpoint:
Theatre is a communal artform, which means that relationships can complicate any aspect of theatremaking.
Point:
Students will abuse their power in the position of an intimacy professional.
Counterpoint:
It is absolutely possible that a student could abuse their power in the position of an intimacy professional. However, the structures of the program and of the curriculum provide many fail-safes and faculty oversight to reduce the possibility of abuse of power.
Point:
Using undergraduate students as intimacy professionals is a methodology to avoid paying someone qualified to enact theatrical intimacy work.
Counterpoint:
By allowing a student to engage in intimacy work, we are putting the student on the path to become a qualified intimacy professional with over sixty-four hours of experience. Knowing how costly many intimacy training programs are, the School of Drama is actually saving the student the financial burden of investing in this training post-graduation without a guarantee of the opportunity to practice the craft in supervised, controlled environments.
This article can be a step toward changing the narrative that an intimacy professional must have a certain amount of “life experience” or be of a certain age to confidently facilitate beginner-level intimacy. If educational theatre wants to embark on a path toward fully immersed consent culture, it must create and have pathways to make more consent-culture change agents. Relying on one faculty member to sustain the work that must be done by all involved in theatre-making will likely cause burnout of the faculty member, which may in turn cause the theatrical intimacy fail-safes to collapse. The work of care and consent requires all theatremakers, regardless of role, title, expertise, or educational level, to commit to upholding these standards. By carefully crafting opportunities for undergraduate students to join the care web, we only make the silk strings of the web stronger.
For more information, intimacy training, and resources for consent-based practices, check out the following organizations and articles:
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Heartland Intimacy Design & Training: www.heartlandintimacydesign.com
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Kate Busselle, “De-Roling and Debriefing: Essential Aftercare for Educational Theatre,” doi.org/10.1353/tt.2021.0028
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Kate Busselle and Hannah Fazio, “Windows into Revolutionary Recovery: Check-Ins, De-Roling, and Debriefing Practices for Rehearsal and Performance,” www.theatrepractice.us/pdfs/Busselle-and-Fazio-Revolutionary-Recovery.pdf
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Free / Open Access Resources on Theatrical Intimacy (compiled by Jordan Rosin): jordanrosin.com/2022/12/20/free-open-access-resources-on-theatrical-intimacy
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Intimacy Choreographers, Coordinators, and Educators Resource Group on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/633911887146953
Works Cited
“Chicago Theatre Standards: Making Safe Spaces to Do Dangerous Work.” not in our house Chicago theatre community, 13 Mar. 2022, notinourhouseorg.wordpress.com/chicago-theatre-standards-12-11-17-2-2.
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“Institutional Subscription.” Heartland Intimacy Design & Training, heartlandintimacydesign.thinkific.com/courses/institutional-subscription.
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“Intimacy Choreographers, Coordinators, and Educators Resource Group.” By Theatrical Intimacy Education, Facebook, 4 Dec. 2019, www.facebook.com/groups/633911887146953.