A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives, Managers, and Crew

by Alexis Black & Tina M Newhauser

Published by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

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Supporting Staged Intimacy: A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives,

Managers, and Crew examines the relationship between staged intimacy,

intimacy direction, and those supporting the process during

pre-production, rehearsal, and performance.

 

This book will help backstage and offstage theatre artists recognize the

problematic approaches and culture that led to the emerging field

of intimacy direction, provide tools and recommended practices for

supporting the creation and maintaining of staged intimacy, and empower readers with the necessary skills to prompt change. By providing modern techniques, essential workplace protocols, and achievable action items, this book will transform the way theatre designers, managers, crew, and other creative team members engage with theatrical consent.

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Supporting Staged Intimacy is written for every pre-professional and professional artist working behind the scenes who wish to better support consensual workplaces, physically intimate stories, and the individuals telling those stories.

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Its History: In 2019, I invited Alexis into my advanced stage management class to explore the relationship between an intimacy director, a new position starting to gather attention in film/TV/theatre, and the stage manager. My end goal was to create a movement toolkit for my students, added to our current handbook, that would help guide them as they took on the role of stage manager for our department productions.

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Alexis and I quickly realized that this toolkit could be useful in the professional and academic worlds of theatre. Alexis then reached out to her colleagues at Intimacy Directors & Coordinators (IDC) to share with them what we were doing, and to inquire about a workshop that we were thinking about developing. That conversation became the catalyst that led to us developing the 'Stage Managing Intimacy' workshop for IDC. Since that initial conversation, Alexis and I have taught our workshop over 8 times to more than 250 professionals & educators.

 

This workshop became the first step, and then a launchpad, for our book. We quickly realized that many more individuals, other than stage managers, engage with staged intimacy.  So we took on a more expanded view regarding how to support the work, with a focus on managers, creatives, and of course, production crews.

This book was three years in the making. It was born out of workshops, in-depth conversations, professional interviews, research, consultations, writing, rewriting, and a lot of editing. I'm proud of this work and I hope it helps to create a more consensual and supportive working environment, where we can take chances, be vulnerable, and create meaningful theatre.