“I’m an intimacy choreographer.”

When we watch intimacy sometimes we feel our hearts sort of engage with what's happening in a way and sometimes bodies will get involved. Sometimes the audience will start breathing with them the lean in and they'll just really get taken into the scene because they recognize what those feelings are and there's something really beautiful about that. If you've wanted yet feared to do work that is weird this is the show you just need to hear. Let's say you're out of play. Let's say Romeo and Juliet and there's that big kiss. Maybe the director wants it to be a little sexier. Where's that line between acting and real life? How do you deal with how intimacy affects actors on stage and off stage? Luckily there's Tania Siena, an intimacy choreographer. And she helps directors orchestrate any kind of intimate scene for the stage. Be it light hand holding, a passionate kiss or some sort of dianesian, hedonistic orgy. I'm your host, Sam Balter and this is Weird Work. Now let's listen to them speak about their jobs which are quite unique. Weird work. How do you define intimacy? Well intimacy for the stage and it's very important that I add the phrase for the stage or for performance sake because people misunderstand what intimacy for the stage really is. They think that it's real that people are rehearsing kissing doing this stuff and that they just have a script and they go into the scene and they just decide to improv their way through the choreography of what kissing somebody would be. And that seems intuitive because that's how life works. And that's how the theater is not life and neither is film. These are fake circumstances. So when we're dealing with intimacy for the stage, the problem that I found really early on was that there was no protocol for handling choreographing these things. There was a extensive training on how to choreograph a fight and whenever there was any sort of thing in the script that says they kiss, it was always, okay, just go do it. Kiss. Yeah. And the two actors are supposed to navigate this by themselves, which some actors can do if they feel comfortable and they have consent that they've discussed. So we've noticed lately, especially consent is a very personal thing and some people don't know what it means. And consent is something that can only come from the person who is receiving the contact. It can't come from anyone else in the room. So the problem is in the industry, the director, the choreographer says, okay, do this and this and this and the actors do it in a fight. That's one thing. But when you're doing intimacy training consent has is a question that has to be asked constantly as you're working at each like round of it. Yes, every time there's a move essentially you have to check in with the actors and make sure that this makes sense contextually for the characters that the story is being told correctly because there's a lot of ways to kiss somebody. And what I a long time ago when I was first discovering that there was a need and a hole in the industry here, I took the techniques that I had learned in making fights very specific and very safe and very choreographed and structured. Okay. And just start applying them to intimacy scenes. Talking about intimacy scenes, why don't I just go through a quick list of things that you tell me if it's like counts at intimacy. Two characters hugging each other. Yes. Okay. So and then we're going hugging, kissing, groping, like all the way to sex on stage. Sure. And in fact, intimacy can even include sexual tension. Okay, so even if two characters are just eyeing each other and flirting a little bit on stage, we'll put that into intimacy. It is stuff that I have been hired to come in and choreograph. Yes. Okay. As an intimacy director, however, it's not always necessary, you know what I mean. It's when a specialist comes in, it makes it more efficiently done because the actors aren't navigating it on their own. Somebody's saying, okay, put your hand here. Maybe we try this. What do you feel about putting your hand here? Is this okay with you to they say yes. He says yes, just said yes. Then we try it. That didn't really work. Let's try it again. I'm going to put your hand here because they can't see themselves from the outside. Yeah. I'm just going to put your hand here. Kissing like normal people would, but the difference is there's 500 people watching. So it's intimacy not for two people, but for 500. Yeah. So the intimacy has to change. The choreography has to be bigger. It's got to, it's got to include the entire audience. And the only way to do that is to have an outside eye. And then we try to spread the spectra with fight choreography. A little bit. I guess coin different side. Yeah, I guess save coin different side. Fighting itself is an intimate act that I noticed as a performer, mostly because I was a performer first before I started becoming a fight director. And I'm still an actor, but you know, most of the times people want me to choreograph. They don't want me to do this. Got it. I am. So I as a performer could feel these emotions while I was fighting of this exhilaration of an extreme care for my partner of wanting to make them look good and take care of them in exchange. They take care of me and there's a symbiotic like, you know, energy that's going on between two people that are in a violent fight because it's you have a lot of physical contact. And you're wearing weight, you have to work together. So there's a lot of interesting things that that coincided with it. Okay. So it's like a lot of the facts about like how do two people navigate this scene where they don't actually want to kill each other and they want to make each other look better on stage. Right. So if two actors actually hate each other while they're fighting, that's dangerous. That's bad. We don't want that. Yeah. And there's a big difference between stage combat and intimacy is that with fighting the longer you fight, you don't hate each other more when you're rehearsing. Yeah. But with intimacy training, the longer you rehearse an intimacy scene with physical contact with sexual contact, even if there's other people in the room, your body is going to have natural responses to that. Do you think it's just straight up biological? Do you think there's something else to it? Yeah, there definitely. I mean, in the workshops that I teach, we do a lot of exercises with just practicing being in love with somebody for fun. Yeah. I give my students a safe space where on I'm on the outside telling them to have an attraction for somebody. So we're going to do this choreography and I want you to pretend like you have an attraction for the person across from you and they will find these connections because the body automatically their hearts will start beating together. They're, you know, their breathing will will sync up. They're making eye contact with each other. They're actually listening to each other. They're being present with each other. Yeah. And that's what the audience sees as real. Is it create like if there's that feeling between them, it's going to seem more real? Absolutely, but it's not real. It's up to the actors to make it look authentic, but it can't be real because we can't fall in love with every person we kiss on stage or else we'd be in very emotional trouble. So I guess you are doing this fight choreography. You start focusing in on intimacy and then you end up creating this intimacy directors. So what inspired you to create that organization? I'd seen very young students in training programs who were directed by older directors from, you know, quote unquote Broadway directors who were coming in as guest artists. And they were very inappropriate with the students who were in a training program and terrified to say no. Okay. So they have to do everything that they're told. And as I watched this, I realized this just cannot be the way this goes. And I literally was observing people kind of be sexually harassed during rehearsals. And that was when I said I have to do something about I have to do something about this. And I was like, "Be the way we do this." Because people were not talking about it. They say sex on stage. Like we don't want to talk about it. I don't want to look at it. I was a performing in a show where I had to kiss my partner and we had no chemistry. Okay. And the director said, "You guys are terrible. This kiss looks terrible." Why is it? Was it a terrible kiss? It was bad at first. Okay. It was very bad. We were both, I mean, the kiss wasn't bad. It just felt like just very unnatural. Okay. Yeah. And we weren't being guided through it. We were just asked to do it. And neither of us talked through it beforehand. We just, and we were young. We were both 23. So he told the director one day in tech week. He said, "You guys, you just need to rehearse this. Go in the lobby. Just rehearse this." And so he and I went into a private place in the lobby where no one was. And we rehearsed the scene. second that our lips touched, it was Absolutely not rehearsal. It was real. That was a real kiss. It we were doing the script, but no one was watching and because no one was watching, it's not theater and it's not rehearsal. - So there needs to be even in practicing, you think there needs to be somebody else there? - There must be, yes. In my opinion, if I'm working on a show, I never recommend anyone to go rehearse a kiss by themselves without a staged manager present or a director present or a choreographer present, because it's inappropriate. - But as something that happens on stage more than fighting, it was something that was just being brushed over without any technique. At the time, this was in 2004 for all of this stuff started happening. So you understand that, you know. - Different environment. - Very, very different environment. Back that. - Even having two, two same gender people kissing was very taboo back then. - Yeah. - It was still becoming less taboo. So at the time, it was a lot of male female kissing and a lot of, you know, the males would be very terror, especially if it was a rape scene. The males would be terrified to have to be an aggressor and a lot of times they're the ones that I had to help more. - So you get brought on to a play. What's the first thing you do and kind of walk me through maybe an example of sort of the beginning training and then potentially the choreography process? - If I'm going to be an intimacy director for a show, I come in and basically the first thing I do is talk to them and communicate. - With the actors, directors, everybody? - Everybody in the room that is involved in the scene or really the whole cast, if it's a show that has like a big number with a lot of sex in it. Like for example, I just worked on a show at the Stratford Festival and it was a eight woman sort of orgy ritual. - Okay. - And so we had a workshop with the entire cast. And so I first explained to them what it is that I do because people get nervous when they hear the word intimacy choreographer, intimacy director. They're like, oh no, no, no. - What do they think, what do you think that they think is gonna, because like I was, Ed didn't really make me too nervous. Like I, I think what? - That's because you didn't have to be too nervous. - Yeah, I guess I'm not a kissing, but I'm not an actor, so who does? (laughing) But like what is making people nervous about this? - I think what's making them nervous is that they, they don't, it's just something new. And so whenever there's something new, people like to sort of, especially nowadays, there's a lot of trolls about things. - Yeah. - I didn't have this problem in 2004. And now there's the internet. So there's always somebody on the internet that's got some dumb thing to say about why this is invalid. - Yeah. - So I would recommend to those people to at least try to educate yourself on what your options are. There are people I was brought on because the director was very uncomfortable choreographing it. And I know a lot of directors that feel that way, that don't like choreographing sex. And then the fact that there are people that specialize in this, just like there are people that specialize in choreographing fights, you know, if there's a huge fight on your stage, you're not gonna just try to do it yourself if you don't have training in that. And the same for intimacy. If you don't know what you're doing, you could create a situation inadvertently without knowing that it's dangerous for your actors, especially if you don't aren't updated on how to talk about this stuff. We now have gender pronouns. We have to be very delicate about. - Yeah. - You know, there's a lot of new things that have come up in the last five years, three years to be more inclusive, which is all good. Because we've been excluding a lot of people from our conversation. - So I guess like, how do you approach that when you start choreographing? - I treat everybody differently. Everybody in the room, you know, every time I do this, it's different. It's not a cookie cutter process. I have to take into account the past traumas and present traumas of the people that I'm working with. And so we are trained in trauma awareness. Not we're not counselors. It's very very different. But we all have mental health awareness training so that we are at least aware of trauma symptoms and that we can get if somebody comes to us with this something happened and, you know, there's a process. We all have knowledge of where to get them help, how to get them help, you know, it's more than just being a choreographer. It's knowing how to get tools to get them not being damaged from a show that they were in. And it also helps the entire industry just check themselves on how they're treating their actors and how they're treating their company and how they're treating this process. And as you can see by all the people coming forward with these stories, there's a lot of nonsense happening backstage. - Yeah, nonsense. - And I'm very polite way to say it. - Nonsense. (laughing) - So it sounds like a big part of this in the beginning, no matter what, before you even get into like, who's touching who, when, where, and how. There's a lot of like, just speaking to people, making sure everybody's comfortable in the environment. - Yeah, we invented a four-pillar system that is available on our website for anybody that wants to read it. So the four-pillar system starts with context. We talk about the context of the show. What's the story of the scene? And then communication, we talk about our boundaries and these are the places we're gonna be touching. These are the places we're not gonna be touching. And the third one is consent. It's making sure that everybody is on board all the time. Insusiastically consenting to the work and not being coerced into the choreography. And that takes training to be able to know the difference. - Yeah. - And then finally, choreography, where there has to be an outside eye, keeping track of the choreography, writing it down. And then afterwards, there's a process of, I hand the choreography to the stage manager who watches it every night to make sure it doesn't change from here on out. Just like a fight. - Yeah. - And that's the extra step that keeps people from being sexually assaulted on stage. - Is to be able to watch it each night and make sure that it's not changing? - Yeah, you know, somebody adds the kiss. - Yeah. - Then the stage manager says, "Hey, what happened tonight?" You added something and the actor can explain themselves. If they say, "I tripped and I, something happened, I might foot that suck and I had to change it." You know, that's one thing. But if it was like, "Oh, I just felt like it needed an extra kiss there." - It's just a fight. - Yeah. Because your partner wasn't ready for that, maybe. And didn't approve it and didn't consent to it. So it's more to just develop a language of the way we talk about these things. It's not to put rules on people and it's not to make people feel restricted. It actually makes people feel more open because they have a boundary. They know where the boundary is. - So where do you draw inspiration from when you're starting to begin to choreograph these scenes? - Yeah, well, it depends on the show. Sometimes I have a lot of books, photography, pictures of really aesthetically beautiful bodies in space and I've also done a lot of budwara photography and pin up photography that has helped me understand posing. I have at times had to research porn to get specific angles and things or styles, depending on, like, for example, the last show she wanted to release female gaze with the intimacy. - Okay. - It was a room full of women celebrating their bodies. But she wanted it to look aesthetically beautiful to females. So all the women kept their clothes on. There was a lot of flowy skirts. It was about their bodies there. They were having orgasms without anybody touching. They were doing it with their minds. - Yeah. - So it was a very erotic scene, but it wasn't pornographic. It was really aesthetically very light on the nudity and it wasn't there to shock the audience. It was there to look powerful and it was there to look almost religious in worshipping their own bodies kind of way. So for that, I had to research some female gaze pornography and lesbian pornography for that. - And you're just like, you're sitting there with a notebook, pausing, see, like, what are you just like pausing, seeing, and you're like, oh, that's a great pose. Like, let's get that one in the mix. - Like, well, sometimes it depends, yeah. I mean, I have done that in the past before. When I, when, before I had as much experience as I do now, but now I don't have to do as much as that. I have a lot of pictures in my head that I can pick from. - Yeah, you at this point, you're a pro. - I guess one of the things that I wonder about is like, how do you get these really authentic and intimate moments when every inch of it, every finger movement is choreographed? - Okay, good question. So it's choreographed, but within the frame of a choreography, so I choreograph the skeleton of the scene with the actors and the way that I work with them, they have input the entire time. It's not, I don't come in with a piece of paper and the choreography already written and I say, this is where this finger goes and this is where this hand goes and this is where this goes. I don't do that. that would be. awful for anyone. Okay. What I do is I come in and I don't have anything planned. We go through the blocking of the scene with no emotion at all. I just say physically this is what's gonna happen. This hand is gonna go here and then you're gonna go into kiss and the kiss is very, I have a very specific, we have protocol for kissing where I use intensity level scales for my technique which is the brand of intimacy training that I developed, which is called intimacy for the stage. So on a scale of one to 10, I'll give you an example. Okay. If let's say Romeo and Juliet have to kiss and they do. Perfect. So Romeo and Juliet are gonna kiss and it just says they kiss. Usually Shakespeare does not have a lot of stage directions. Okay. Got it. So it's always up to you and I've seen a million different ways that they kiss. So he's gonna initiate Juliet's going to follow. Let's choreograph the kiss beforehand. So I use an intensity level scale. Let's say he comes in to kiss her at a two. On a scale of one to 10, one being the least intense, 10 being the most intense. Okay. And so like one is like pack on the cheek. Yeah. Like a sweet sort of kiss. Nice kiss. So on a scale of one to 10, he comes in at a two. Really nice and soft. And it's lips have contacts, two to two. Juliet initiates an increase in intensity. So she brings it. She yanks them in and she pulls it up to, so the kiss goes two to two. Juliet brings it up to a five. Okay. And then they kiss at a five five five three four three two off. And now the actors have an idea of what that kiss looks like. So it starts slow. It gets more at she pulls them in. It gets intense. And then the energy between them leads down back down to a two. And then they release. And that's the choreography. As this is going on, are you like, okay, it's at two kiss. Juliet comes in up the intensity. Okay. So let's slide like one arbor out the back, pull in that upset to three. Is it like that level or not usually initially usually I just go with the kiss first. And then we handle, you know, like then we talk about the hands and where we want the hands to be placed. Okay. The hands change depending on how intense the kiss is, you know, if you're kissing somebody at a one and your hand is groping at a 10, that's weird. So it all has to make sense. Okay. So there's like, there's an arc to the kiss. You work that arc out. Yes. And then you work out the choreography of the rest of the body. Okay. And once the actors understand all of those pieces, you say, okay, now you guys try it. I'm going to stay right here and we'll go through it. And we work out the kinks and say, well, this didn't feel right. My hand got stuck under his arm. It was weird. My nose got, you know, whatever. And that's when I'll come in and coach. Okay. Because they sometimes they can't think about what their hands are doing. They're sure to focus on kissing, you know. Yeah. They need somebody to help them make the kiss look what we wanted to look like. And then they with the skeleton of the scene can relax into it and find things that make it individual. Let me make it look authentic to them. So I can take the authentic impulses of the actors and slip it into the choreography so that it doesn't feel choreographed for them. So you've worked on like a lot of different productions. It sounds like, you know, dramas like you've worked in, you know, potentially like comedies, other things like that. Oh, sure. What's like the dream gig for you? Like what's the what's the best? What's the most fun to be an intimacy director at? I actually really enjoy intimacy that is not shockingly erotic. Like I really like softer intimacy things that are a little more insinuated. I like showing parts of the body, even not all of it. I don't like full nude, you know, I like peaking little pieces of the body so that it's sort of teasing. Sometimes the audience will start breathing with them, they'll lean in and they'll just really get taken into the scene because they recognize what those feelings are. And there's something really beautiful about that. And if you can manipulate it so that it's not shocking and makes the audience want to turn away and not look, you know, I feel like nudity on stage is a little old. Yeah, I've seen a naked ballet. It's not, you know, one of these like that was like 10. Yeah, that was like 10 years ago. Like it's not it's nothing new now. Their bodies, you know, we all have bodies. So and you know, sex is everywhere now. But, you know, the illusion to sex or the connection, the chemistry between two people is what we really want to see. We, you know, we really want to see these two actors find something real between them that we believe. And even it's not, we know it's not real because it can't be real. They're actors. And that's the part of it that I'm trying to make sure the people understand, you know, that there's a line and people want to be able to go to work, do their scenes, and then walk away without having damage or trauma. And without having to give up their relationship in their real life to make room for their profession, you don't have to leave your husband to be in a show with someone else and have a showman's. I really love the term showman's. That's very funny to me. But I got, okay, so it seems like there's this really tangible benefit for young people. What about the people who are older? Yes. Well, I was really interested when I went to the Stafford Festival and I worked with that company. There were a lot of more seasoned actors in that cast and they were doing this work for the first time. Many of whom had done intimacy scenes a million times throughout their careers. Like Lucy Pekak, who is one of the actresses in the show, she has been every queen and every show there ever was. She's played every, you know, she's done a lot of intimacy on stage. And afterwards, she had commented that she realized that there were so many instances where she had been abused in rehearsals and didn't realize it. You know, she never said anything because it's like, well, this is the way this is the job, you know, but that having a process, having a protocol, having a safety net and having an expert in the room who can say, no, actually, I can make you look beautiful if you just move your hand here. The actors felt like they had a little more comforts, even the even the more seasoned actors. So I think older actors are going, wow, I wish this had been a thing earlier. Yeah, but it's taken a long time to get people on board because sex is scary and Americans are terrified of it. But we're working on it. Everyone is getting a little bit better. And with every single person that comes forward and says, you know what, this process isn't okay. It's leading them towards those of us that have been working on this for 15 years or more trying to make it better. And it's important for people to know that there is somewhere they can go and equity and sag are doing a really great job of finding ways for people to report incidents that happen. But what we're offering is a way to prevent it. There should be rules that people understand that are clear so that they know where the line is and when they're crossing it. I just really want to thank you for coming on to the show. I think being able to talk about intimacy and about that line between like professionalism and you know, when does that get crossed and the sort of like and somewhat can be even murky environments and like how it's affected different generations. I think it's just so interesting to hear. And I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you so much for having me. Holy shit, we're approaching the end of the year already. Before we crack open 2018, we have one quick question for you. Which episode of Weird Work has been your favorite so far? Send us some holiday cheer by letting us know at [email protected] or shoot us a message on Facebook or Twitter at Weird Work. Let us know which episodes you dug the most and we'll see you next week. Okay, thanks, bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]