SPECIAL DIRECTOR KEEPS EYE ON INTIMACY
Relationship between girl, pastor in The Blue Hour needs choreography
The Blue Hour, Skirtsafire’s main stage production for 2020, is notable for bringing an emerging job description to a theatre stage in Edmonton.
The job is that of intimacy director (also known as intimacy co-ordinator, particularly in film and television). The position — which has gained prominence since the #Metoo movement — sees trained professionals ensuring that scenes involving nudity or sex, or other forms of touching, are done following rules of communication and conduct to ensure the safety and comfort of performers.
Intimacy director Samantha Jeffery (also an Edmonton actor and theatre producer) was hired for The Blue Hour to help work through scenes between two of the play’s characters — Bonnie, who is 15 in the play, and Pastor John, who is 42. There is no sex between the characters, but their intimate relationship is implicit.
“It’s about helping to shape the story that they want to tell, especially in The Blue Hour, where there isn’t explicit sexuality on stage,” says Jeffery, who is apprenticing with Intimacy Directors International and has been working in the field for several years. “It’s being there for the actors, to guide their impulses and help them do the job that they were hired to do.”
Intimacy directors choreograph scenes of physical contact to make sure all parties are comfortable, whether they are kissing each other or getting between the sheets. Sometimes a touch on the arm has to stand in for something else, and Jeffery is there to make sure that chemistry is clear.
The field of intimacy direction is small in Canada, with maybe a half-dozen practitioners; Jeffery (who is also a fight director) travels for training to the United States, where the position is more established. In January, the Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA released new standards for the use of intimacy co-ordinators on set.
There are numerous layers to the work, says Jeffery, pointing to one show in which offstage relationships had the potential to make things awkward onstage. That’s because the University of Alberta production of God’s Ear at Studio Theatre featured both professors and students as actors.
“What if the person you are kissing on stage is your professor? How would you say ‘I don’t want to do it this way?’ It can be very difficult to negotiate those power dynamics.”
Jeffery also consulted on Theatre Prospero’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“There is a big lovers scene in the middle. If we want to climb all over each other, we have to make sure we check in first and have specific choreography. Are the movements we are doing actually telling that story, and if not, how do we change it to respect the boundaries of the performers involved?
“Non-consensual contact on stage is an assault; it’s just an assault in front of a whole bunch of people,” she says.
Though there is not so much as a kiss between the pastor and the teenager in The Blue Hour, there is emotional tension that can be seen in the delicate dance between them.
Jeffery says actors are taught to say “yes” and that saying “no” can be read as a lack of co-operation. Performers must learn how to negotiate new rules, and how to say ‘I am not comfortable touching that body part,’ or ‘maybe your hands can be on another part of my body beside the one that hurts.’
“Stories can always be told in different ways,” she says.