Theatrical Intimacy Education

Theatrical Intimacy Education Logo

Founded in 2017 by Laura Rikard and Chelsea Pace, Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) is a consulting group specializing in researching, developing, and teaching best practices for staging theatrical intimacy.

Theatrical Intimacy Education empowers artists with the tools to ethically, efficiently, and effectively stage intimacy, nudity, and sexual violence.

History

Theatrical Intimacy Education was founded in 2017 by Chelsea Pace and Laura Rikard. They decided to found the company at the 2017 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference that was held in Las Vegas, Nevada that year.

Rikard and Pace met at the 2014 ATHE Conference, when it was held in Scottsdale, Arizona. They were introduced to each other by colleague Dr. Jason Scott, a professor at Arizona State University. He had first met Rikard when she was a professor at Stephen F. Austin State University, and Pace when she was a graduate student at Arizona State University, and thought that the two would have a mutual interest in creating better practices for the theatre process.

Rikard had been researching and developing tools for consent-based practice in the acting classroom, and for better managing the power dynamic in theatre arts since becoming an instructor of college students in 2008. During this year, Rikard started graduate school at the University of Virginia, where she was a graduate instructor. And it was there where she began this work by developing the tool of de-roling in her Introduction to Acting classes.

When Rikard became a Professor of Theatre, she furthered her research in consent-based practices, the connection between stage movement and acting technique, and disparity in power dynamics in the acting classroom. As a movement teacher and coach, she found that she was often being requested to come work on scenes for plays that centered around moments of physical intimacy, and found that her research was helping to support better practices when staging these moments.

Pace was developing a choreographic language for staging moments of physical intimacy, similar to that of fight and dance. This was her focus as a graduate student at Arizona State University. She was also looking for a way to physicalize how to communicate physical boundaries. And it was as a graduate instructor to skateboarders who often fell and got injured and then took her movement class, that she developed boundary practice; this is a practice in which actors can show, guide, and tell about their physical boundaries for specificity and clarity before working together.

Rikard and Pace found that their methods complimented each other, and were often invited to speak on panels at various theatre conferences about their work. In 2018, Professor Kim Shively (TIE Associate Faculty) encouraged Rikard to start a company where people could locate and learn about the work that they were doing. Rikard approached Pace about the idea, and they created the company together. The mission of the company has always been "to train everyone in the room at being better at being in the room".

The Journal of Consent-Based Performance (JCBP)

The Journal of Consent-Based Performance (JCBP) is an academic journal that is edited and contributed to by Amanda Rose Villarreal (TIE Associate Faculty), with other contributors being Chelsea Pace (TIE Co-Founder), Greg Geffrard (TIE Associate Faculty), Laura Rikard (TIE Co-Founder), Karie Miller, Kelsey Miller, Elizabeth Wellman, Sheridan Schreyer, and Nicolas Shannon Savard. The JCBP stands firmly rooted in the study, practice, and pedagogy of consent-based performance practices, with one foot planted in theory and scholarship, and the other foot planted in public knowledge.

It promotes community-based learning among intimacy professionals, without the gatekeeping often associated with scholarly models and the arts industry.

Staging Sex: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Theatrical Intimacy

Staging Sex: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Theatrical Intimacy is a book written by Chelsea Pace with contributions from Laura Rikard released in 2020. It lays out a comprehensive, practical solution for staging intimacy, nudity, and sexual violence.

This book takes theatre practitioners step-by-step through the best practices, tools, and techniques for effective theatrical intimacy. After an overview of the challenges directors have staging theatrical intimacy. Staging Sex offers practical solutions and exercises to practice putting the solutions into practice. The book offers a system for establishing and discussing boundaries and efficient and effective language for staging intimacy and sexual violence. Additionally, Staging Sex addresses production and classroom-specific concerns and provides guidance for creating a culture of consent in any company or department.

About the Founders

Chelsea Pace (she/her, SDC) is an intimacy choreographer, coordinator, and educator with more than a decade of dedicated research in the field of intimacy work. As Co-Founder and Head Faculty of Theatrical Intimacy Education, she has shared her work with thousands of theatre and film artists around the world. Her work appears in studio and independent film and television projects and from academic theatre, to regional theatre, to Broadway. She is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Medallion for her contributions to Intimacy Direction/Choreography. She was the Intimacy Director for the Tony Award winning shows A Strange Loop, Leopoldstadt, and the Tony Award Nominated production, KPOP. She has taught theatre at Arizona State University, North Dakota State University, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has served as an intimacy choreographer/director, and fight director on many regional and educational productions and numerous network/studio film/television productions.

Laura Rikard (she/her, SAG-AFTRA/AEA) is a director, actor, teacher, intimacy choreographer, intimacy coordinator, and a Co-Founder and Head Faculty of Theatrical Intimacy Education. She is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Laura has worked as an actor in film and television in NYC, regionally, on national tours, internationally and devised solo performance productions. She is the lead teacher of German, Austrian, and Swiss Intimacy Coordinators in collaboration with Culture Change Hub and the BFFS (the German Federal Actors Association). She has served as an intimacy choreographer for many regional and educational productions and as an intimacy coordinator for a number television series and films. She has been a guest artist on intimacy, and consent based training at educational and artistic institutions around the world. Awards include: Kennedy Center Medallion for her contributions to Intimacy Direction/Choreography, Best Acting Award at the 2011 Virginia Film Festival, Excellence in Teaching and Advising Awards at USC Upstate and the USC Upstate Glasswing Butterfly Award. She has taught theatre at the University of Virginia, Stephen F. Austin State University, Brown University, and the University of Miami.

Workshops and Courses

Theatrical Intimacy Education offers workshop courses as a way to train in the topic of consent-based practice. They have various ongoing workshops, many online and a few in-person.

References

This article "Theatrical Intimacy Education" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Theatrical Intimacy Education. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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