An outside view of the University Theatre on main campus. (Photo by Caelyn Hare)
Since 2016’s #MeToo movement unveiled decades of unfettered abuse and discomfort in Hollywood, the outcry for more advocacy for performers, especially when they’re asked to portray intimate or vulnerable scenes, has amplified. Across the industry, that support is coming in the form of intimacy coordinators and choreographers even at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Their task is simple: preserve and protect the well-being of actors and actresses who participate in sex scenes or other intimate scenes and make sure their interests are represented and respected by directors, producers and other higher-ups. While high-profile cases against famous directors sparked this push for more professional safeguards, intimacy coordination is happening at every level, including performance spaces at CU Boulder.
“Consent is a very important thing in the theater world, especially when you’re dealing with really heavy emotional pieces,” said Hannah Iverson, program coordinator for Sandbox Theater, a performance group at CU Boulder. “Especially when you have to touch other actors, you want to make sure they’re comfortable. For us, that’s a really big part of intimacy coordination: making sure everyone feels safe and comfortable every day when they come to work.”
Consent is the most important thing, according to Iverson. Actors, directors and production crew alike must be informed of their roles and willing and able to consent to whatever intimacy they’re portraying on screen or stage.
At CU Boulder, Matthias Bolon, a master’s student in theater and dance, is working with Sandbox to enhance the comfort and consent of all people involved in the production of intimate scenes. He hosted a workshop about on-stage intimacy and consent-based practices for performers, and two more are upcoming on April 29 and 30.
The CU Independent spoke with Bolan to discuss how he started in intimacy work, why it’s important and how to incorporate consent principles on and off stage.
This interview has been condensed and edited for accuracy and brevity.
Q: How did you get involved with CU Boulder’s Sandbox Theater?
I was involved with Sandbox as an actor at first. I was mostly just interested in helping out with small things. Then, I started auditioning for shows like Julius Caesar, and then we came to this point where we started doing some really ambitious shows or doing full-stage productions that were a lot more involved.
Some of those involved very complicated issues. Maybe there’s a character who goes to kiss another without consent. How do we tackle that as a group of students that want to do interesting, complex work about these things? How do we create a respectful space for each other?
It’s only been within the last year that I’ve been more involved as someone who might be referred to as an intimacy choreographer-in-training.
Q: What has your intimacy education entailed?
I’m going primarily through two different organizations. There’s Theatrical Intimacy Education; they do a lot of classes that center around handling trauma-informed communication. I’m also going through Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, and they have a pathway for certification.
There’s also a new publication journal called the Journal of Consent-Based Performance, which is actually a free resource. It’s one of the few academic journals that you don’t have to pay to observe.
The goal with consent-based practices is that people will be able to have them and learn about them without the exorbitant amount of expenses that usually come with higher education.
Q: Not to give everything away, but what will your Sandbox workshops look like?
We’ll be discussing what intimacy choreography is, why it’s important, and when we will need to use those tools.
They will involve some boundary work. So, how do we work with a scene partner when it’s our first time? Where do we learn when touch is OK? How do we ask if we can try something in a scene? This sounds very basic, but it’s surprising how many actors get paralyzed by the idea of, “What is okay for me if I have to improv in this scene? Where is okay to touch, especially considering issues of sexual assault within the industry?”
Finally, we’ll have some closure practice routines, which is, how do I step away? If it’s a very intense scene, where there might not have been as much consent or there were some really intense power dynamics, how do we leave this character once the rehearsal process is over, or once the situation we’re kind of practicing with is done? How do we leave that space feeling more like ourselves and not like we’re having to carry that with us?
Q: What do you think that people who are involved in performance – and also those who might not be – can learn from these workshops?
I think a lot of what intimacy comes down to is communication, which we talk about a lot because many degrees at CU Boulder involve some form of collaboration, even if it’s just an in-class project.
I think intimacy comes down to, “How are we asking someone for something? How do we know that we actually got their full consent for something, and there wasn’t some sort of power dynamic that inhibited them from being able to actually fully give a no or give a yes?”
A lot of intimacy training is trauma-informed, which doesn’t mean that you’re a mental health specialist. But, it does mean that you’re trying to approach things with the understanding that maybe someone’s reacting in a specific way not because they are upset with me or because they’re trying to not allow this form of communication to occur, but just because they’re feeling something about it and have been triggered. And we have to step back and approach it differently.
Q: How do you hope intimacy coordination continues to expand at CU Boulder?
I know there are a lot of people interested in it. A lot of intimacy coordination was brought into the department during COVID because we had a Ph.D. student who was exploring intimacy practices, and who’s now an intimacy choreographer. Then I came in right after them and started exploring this content.
I’m hoping that in a lot of ways, there are students who, even if they decide this is not something they want to actively choreograph, that these practices are things they want to continue learning and would even advocate for in a classroom.
Contact CU Independent Arts and Entertainment Editor Lauren Hill at lauren.hill-2@colorado.edu.
