What is Intimacy Training and why is it important?
Photo by Dan Norman
Physical intimacy on stage requires specific choreography to not only create effective moments of drama, but to be safe for the actors participating in it. Like dance choreography or stage combat, moments where actors are engaged in the performance of kissing, nudity, sex, or sexual violence require precision and care to stage. However, moments of physical intimacy differ from stage combat and dance because of what they ask of the actors involved. Issues of consent, boundaries, and environment affect staging these moments in a very different way.
While every moment you see on stage has been carefully crafted and rehearsed, replicating moments of sexual violence or intimacy require heightened consideration because performing those acts can feel just like engaging in them. Simulated actions can strike our bodies as factual. Intimacy choreography ensures that actors’ consent and safety are respected and incorporated into the shaping of these theatrical moments. It ensures that actors don’t experience, relive, or take home trauma from their work on stage or in the rehearsal room.
Training in intimacy choreography is essential to creating a healthy and functional environment by which human intimacy can be explored in a productive and safe manner, conducive with expectations of theatrical professionalism.
The Jungle is working with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) and their co-founder and head faculty Chelsea Pace to bring TIE’s best practices to Jungle artists and members of the Twin Cities theater community. Participants in the training workshop will learn and practice tools for building a culture of consent in rehearsal, establishing boundaries, and choreographing physical intimacy. As part of our commitment to our value that “a Good Theater Cares for its People,” we are excited to bring intimacy training to the Jungle and enhance our community’s professional development as theater practitioners.