Power in Intimacy
Logan Browning & John Patrick Amedori in Dear White People
Let’s talk about sex! Uncomfortable? Well I promise the actors having to enact the intimate scenes in your favorite films are just as uncomfortable filming it. Throughout time, displays of intimacy on stage and screen have morphed and changed, becoming more and more common every decade. Starting in the 50s, when a married couple couldn’t be seen sleeping in a single bed, to present day with the release of films such as Fifty Shades of Grey. When watching a film or live performance, audiences rarely think about what it took to create the art before their eyes. We enjoy the storytelling and rarely stop to question if it is ethical storytelling, audiences just want to be entertained. There are layers of power at play in a rehearsal space when a Director and their actors are beginning to create an intimate scene, or even from an actor’s first audition. In the past decade, a new field of Intimacy Coordination has come to fruition in response to this. Intimacy Designers and Coordinators are beginning to create a new structure of creating intimacy scenes, one that balances the power dynamic between scene partners and Director, uses positive influence and specificity to create a healthy environment, and to help the Director’s vision reach its full potential.
What is intimacy? It can be anything from a hand hold, to simulated sex, or even the creation of tension without touch at all. It is a powerful storytelling tool that, when used effectively, can provide core information about the characters in a given story. Intimacy design is a relatively new field that rose up just after the #metoo movement in 2006 (and the broader wave in 2017), a movement that allowed victims of sexual harassment and abuse start speaking out about their abusers, some of which were powerful men in local and global communities who used their personal power and influence to manipulate countless victims. Like many actors and theatre/film professionals, I have been present when a Director uses the dreaded phrase, “Just go into the hall and figure it out” when referring to a kiss scene. Or saying something along the lines of, “we’re just going to go for it”, without giving actors any blocking or instruction on how to proceed. I have witnessed this first hand from numerous Directors, all ranging in gender and age. I’ve had friends who have shared with me horror stories of being sexually assaulted onstage during a live theatre performance, but it was dismissed as their scene partner “getting too into the moment” or “artistic improvisation”. This not only gaslights any actor trying to speak up about something that made them uncomfortable and invalidates their experience but allows their abusers to think they can get away with repeating their actions.
Actors are just like the rest of us, desperate to hold onto their jobs. Stage and screen Directors throughout history have used this fact to exploit their actors, using pressure tactics of influence to threaten their job if they don’t do what the Director wants. The world watched as woman after woman came forward in the wake of allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, some of which included stars as big as Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow. We also have to take into account that it is common for a male scene partner to be older than their female counterpart, primarily due to female ageism in the entertainment industry. This means the male actor could have considerably more experience in the industry, creating an unbalanced power dynamic between the two. This imbalance makes it all the more difficult for women to voice concerns about a given scene without being quickly dismissed.
Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard in Big Little Lies
Filming and performing relatively tame sex scenes are difficult enough, but when faced with a scene about a sexual abusive character, playing the abused is even more taxing. Nicole Kidman spoke about her experience playing a mother coerced by her abusive husband into forceful and rough sexual acts in Big Little Lies to W Magazine, “I felt very exposed and vulnerable and deeply humiliated at times. I mean, I remember lying on the floor in the bathroom at the very end when we were doing the scenes in episode 7, and I was lying on the floor and I just wouldn't get up in-between takes. I was just lying there, sort of broken and crying, and I remember at one point Jean-Marc [Director] coming over and just sort of placing a towel over me because I was just lying there in half-torn underwear and just basically on the ground with nothing on and I was just, like [gasps].” She also describes how Director Jean-Marc and her scene partner rarely rehearsed a scene, they just showed up and built it on the spot. And while this organic strategy can be effective, it makes for little protection, mentally and physically, for the actor. Without a clear outline of what blocking is being enacted, it leaves too much wiggle room for a scene partner to overstep boundaries. And, it is vital to provide some form of aftercare, to allow an actor to fully wind down after an emotionally taxing scene.
Zendaya and Hunter Schafer in Euphoria
All that being said, how do we start to create a better system and what exactly does an intimacy coordinator do? Simply put, an intimacy coordinator’s role is to act as a middle ground negotiator between the Director and actor in order to both maintain the Director’s creative vision as well as respect and protect the personal boundaries of each actor. A current working intimacy coordinator, Amanda Blumenthal, whose credits include Euphoria (Season 1 HBO), The Affair (Season 5 Showtime), How To Get Away With Murder (Season 6 ABC), and more, describes the goals of her job as follows: “Whether your scenes deal with nudity, sex, kink, LGBTQ issues, or any other intimate topics, I can insure that the show’s creative vision is realized and that filming proceeds smoothly while providing the actors with a safe environment in which to do their best work”. This includes providing any emotional support an actor might need before and after filming scenes, especially preparing and recovering from intense scenes depicting rape or sexual violence. They remain on set to maintain “fences”, boundaries set by actors on where they can or cannot be touched and acknowledging that these boundaries can change over time. This is especially important when an actor is struggling to separate themselves from a character. When said actor delves so deeply into their character’s psyche and experience, the lines between what the actor is feeling and what a character is feeling become blurred, thus the danger of method acting. An intimacy coordinator can help an actor separate the world of the play and their personal experience. A coordinator can also go as far as choreographing and blocking simulated sex scenes if needed.
They work with other departments, such as costumes, to achieve the vision of the director while still maintaining the comfort level of actors. This is particularly important when, historically, the woman is often less clothed than the man, due to the primarily “male gaze” in which films are directed through. A coordinator also acts as a resource from the very beginning of the process to discuss boundaries actors might have starting at the audition. Overall, they create a safe environment that empowers all parties to voice concerns and feel confident and comfortable in their work. There is also an immense importance placed on verbal consent before doing any kind of physical touch, intimate or otherwise.
Travante Rhodes and André Holland in Moonlight
By discussing an actor’s boundaries, valuing their input, and creating a safe space for the creation of intimacy, the power is put into the hands of the individual being touched, not the one doing the touching. But many might argue that there is little need for Intimacy Coordinators. The older generation’s perspective is generally that, “We’ve never needed this in the past, so why should we start doing it now”. I’ve been in rehearsals where an actor will comply to the change in rehearsal language such as asking for consent before initiating any form of touch with their scene partner, but end up making a joke or snarky comment along the lines of: “I guess we HAVE to do that now”. While its good that people are beginning to move in the direction of asking for consent, they immediately undercut its importance and reveal that they don’t personally see its value and are only complying to appease others. This kind of attitude can easily spread through a cast and creative team and undermine any work to build a system of intimacy implementation. Many have also argued that blocking intimacy is unnecessary, that it takes all the natural passion and “realness” away. To this I often respond by asking if choreographed dance is not beautiful and real? Is the blocking you give actors something that takes away the beauty of a performance? A dancer or actors’ job is to take blocking and choreography given to them and make it real, fill it with emotion and meaning. We would never ask an actor to improvise a fight scene, that’s extremely dangerous, why then should we ask actors to improvise an intimate scene.
Every year, more and more resources are becoming available to hire or train intimacy coordinators. One such company is IDC Professionals (Intimacy Directors and Coordinators). IDC helps you hire intimacy coordinators for both live performance and TV/Film. They have pathways of education to train future intimacy professionals as well as workshops for actors. Their core values are that of anti-racism, creativity, excellence, integrity, and sustainability, as listed on their website. Heartland Intimacy Design & Training is another new company, established in 2019, that is the first entirely online training program for intimacy designers, which has become increasingly more important in a socially distanced world. Their goals are to make intimacy training more affordable and accessible in order to maximise the number of intimacy professionals in the world.
Stephanie Allynne and Leisha Hailey in The L Word: Generation Q
Sex and intimacy can often strip (for lack of a better term) away the façade of a given character and reveal what’s at their core. It is a storytelling tool that is often underutilized. By being specific about who initiates the touch, what kind of touch it is (from a whisper of a touch to bone level contact), who breaks away, how they break away, etc, audiences can understand so much. But all of this is erased when a Director simply says to “figure it out”. Instead of trying to speak the truth of their characters, actors will be preoccupied by the simple pressure of performing at all. As human beings, intimacy with partners in our own lives forces a certain level of vulnerability on our parts, but having to create that same vulnerability with potentially a complete stranger makes an actor feel all the more exposed. By adding an intimacy coordinator into the mix, they can ease those feelings of vulnerability and turn the piece into choreography, this way the actor only needs to focus on filling it with life and truth.
We live in a culture comfortable with violence, but not with sex. We are constantly exposed to it, but never educated on it. This is a dangerous cocktail that leads to a demand for sex scenes, as seen by the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, but little education on how to safely create them. Power plays an important role when creating and performing intimate scenes, for better or for worse. It is so easy for someone with more power to manipulate a given situation. It is the role of an intimacy coordinator to use their expert power to right the scales.
Constance Wu and Henry Golding in Crazy Rich Asians
Works Cited
Andrews, Travis. “Inside the World of Intimacy Coordinators, Who Choreograph Sex Scenes for HBO, Netflix and More.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 16 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/04/16/inside-world-intimacy-coordinators-who-choreograph-sex-scenes-hbo-netflix-more/.
Bhalerao, Yamini Pustake. “Intimate Scenes In Films: How Much Say Do Actresses Have?” SheThePeople TV, SheThePeople, 22 Nov. 2019, www.shethepeople.tv/blog/actress-agency-intimate-scenes-films/.
Blumenthal, Amanda. “Amanda Blumenthal Personal Website.” Amanda Blumenthal, www.intimacycoordinator.com/.
Chu, Jon M., director. Crazy Rich Asians. 2018.
Cooke, Alex, and Follow Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait. “How the Ways We Simulate Sex on Screen Are Evolving.” Fstoppers, 16 Aug. 2019, fstoppers.com/education/how-ways-we-simulate-sex-screen-are-evolving-398018.
“Dear White People.” 2017.
“'Empowering,' 'Deeply Humiliating' and 'Gross': Stars Share How It Really Feels to Film a Sex Scene.” PEOPLE.com, people.com/celebrity/celebrities-talk-about-what-its-like-to-film-a-sex-scene/.
“Euphoria.” 2019.
“Harvey Weinstein Scandal: Who Has Accused Him of What?” BBC News, BBC, 10 Jan. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41580010.
Hirschberg, Lynn. “Nicole Kidman Opens Up About Big Little Lies in Her Most Revealing Interview Yet.” W Magazine | Women's Fashion & Celebrity News, 2017, www.wmagazine.com/story/nicole-kidman-big-little-lies-revealing-interview-celeste/.
“Intimacy Specialist: Heartland Intimacy Design & Training.” Heartland Intimacy D, www.heartlandintimacydesign.com/.
“Introduction to Standards and Protocols for the Use of Intimacy Coordinators.” SAG, www.sagaftra.org/introduction-standards-and-protocols-use-intimacy-coordinators.
Jenkins, Barry, director. Euphoria. 2016.
“The L Word: Generation Q.” 2019.
Rachel Flesher Chicago, et al. “Our Team.” Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, www.idcprofessionals.com/our-team.
Vallée, Jean-Marc, director. Big Little Lies. 2017.