A Love Letter to Intimacy Directors in a Time of Social Distancing
Dear fellow intimacy directors,
I see you. Now may seem like the worst time to be you. Theaters are shuttered, gigs are cancelled, and physical touch between actors—one of the dangers and joys that you help the world navigate—feels far more distant from our reality than the six feet you keep between you and strangers at the grocery store. It’s tough, and even thoughts of the future don’t always provide comfort. I’m writing to remind you that there is a place for intimacy directors in this crisis. The skills that you have built over the years may be an ark to carry us through COVID-19’s rising waters.
Ours is an art of distance and proximity. So is navigating the world in a pandemic. Chelsea Pace frames movement in intimacy choreography as “opening and closing distance.” As those in the United States grappled with what it means to open physical distance between ourselves from others, I want to remind you that intimacy thrives on distance as well as closeness. When an audience watches intimacy, we love the moments before a touch when space apart heightens anticipation.
In the workshops I’ve taken with Intimacy Directors & Coordinators and Theatrical intimacy Education, you have led exercises with performers on how to maintain connection and vulnerability across a room. Actors imagine a golden thread or ball of energy connecting them from afar. Ashely White calls this energy the “sexy taffy” that stretches between performers. As I walked six feet apart with a friend in the hills of Oakland the other day and watched others do the same (and rule-breakers I wished would do the same!), I imagined golden threads between them, a web of interconnections that distance couldn’t eliminate.
“Intimacy” may sometimes be a euphemism for sex, but the broadness of “intimacy” guides our field to thinking about human connection in all its forms. While physical touch and proximity seem to be requisites for emotional connection (think of an “intimate venue”), the task before the socially distanced is to build offstage intimacies that coexist with distance. In her MFA thesis articulating intimacy directing as a practice, Tonia Sina suggests that “the subtle suggestion” of intimacy is far more effective at kindling audience emotions than explicit depiction. How can we keep alive a sense of possibility in our connections—be they familial, collegial, friendly, or romantic—across six feet or indeed across a city or country?
Through our interconnection, the novel coronavirus is showing us the importance of consent and boundaries. The work we usually do in a rehearsal room is becoming a public health imperative in daily life. What is six feet but a boundary that we are now enforcing for public interaction? Navigating a pandemic requires discussing our shared vulnerabilities. We have practiced these discussions in the rehearsal room. The other day, I was taking a walk around my neighborhood when a neighbor’s off-leash dog ran up to me. This neighbor was in her 70s and she hesitated before chasing her dog. Ten feet away, we had a mini “consent talk.” I started, “I’m okay with your dog licking my ankle, but I’m not okay with you coming close to me. Can you wait until your dog gets bored of me and then runs back to you?” She said, “sure,” and that’s what we did. As intimacy directors, we know how to say “no, but” and generate counterproposals. You have taught me these skills, and you can help model them in our distanced world. Self-advocacy, boundary-setting, and uncomfortable conversations are what we need to get through this public health crisis.
This moment is revealing what we’ve known all along: that consent is never an individual act but rather a part of the social fabric. If my housemate consents to go party on the beach in Florida for spring break and assume the risk of infection, that decision affects me, my other housemates, and my whole neighborhood in California. When we’re working on theatrical intimacy, the stakes of artistic risktaking aren’t necessarily as dire as viral infection, yet if an actor consents to play a racial stereotype, that affects all of us. If the industry creates a systemic environment that coerces actors to reshape their bodies to meet conventional beauty standards, individual consent does not make industry dynamics disappear. We’re all in this together. We always are.
Consent is “infectious.” As artmakers, we are trying to remake our social environments to creative livable and equitable ways of working and being together, just as public health workers are creating scripts for social interaction to contain COVID-19. Agency is never solely a question of contracts between freestanding individuals but also a question of the social contracts we build together. Economics are a part of these contracts. Economic security facilitates a greater degree of choice. We must keep advocating for each other and for our fellow workers. If now isn’t easy economically, get the support you need. Check this flowchart to see how the new stimulus package might help you. The National Endowment for the Arts has a great, centralized resource page for artists. Look at your local mutual aid society to see how folks are supporting each other. Mutual aid is infectious, too.
As COVID-19 creates new social contracts for working and being in public, I thank you for having done the important work for our theater before the virus and remind you that your perspective is beautiful and powerful even during the virus. How can we choreograph stunning intimacies in our offstage lives when our theaters are closed or shifted to the digital realm? Earlier, I said that distance is a vital part of intimacy. That truth doesn’t make distancing easy. Distance only feels full if there is the anticipation of proximity. As COVID-19 defers physical proximity, hugs, and in-person artmaking further into the future, a sense of anticipation can fade. Distance can feel empty. That’s okay.
These days, I find myself asking, “Am I ever going to direct intimacy again? Will I ever see my friends in New York? Will I get to work on that dream script I was slated to direct this spring?” Breathe. You got this. Feel that anticipation for that Zoom call with a director you haven’t talked to in years. Feel that anticipation for the family recipe you and your sibling will each cook in kitchens across the country. And if you must, feel anticipation for the artistic work you can make right now. Feel that it’s okay to be unproductive, too. Even with distance, find the ways you can get emotionally closer to others. The world will be transformed by this virus for worse and for better. I’m excited to see what theater can emerge on the other side. I believe in you. You make me feel brave. I believe in intimacy in a world of social distancing.
Love,
Kari
Kari Barclay is a director, writer, and educator based in Stanford’s PhD in Theater and Performance Studies. He lives in Berkeley with his houseplants. kari-barclay.com