Dana Gee for the Vancouver Sun

Publishing date: Jul 29, 2022

On-set support a growing field, helping actors throw back the covers in intimate scenes

Love scenes are not that lovely for actors.

It’s the job of the intimacy co-ordinator to make those manufactured moments less nerve-wracking — and to ensure the safety of the performers.

As "an actor's advocate," intimacy coordinators help with intimate scenes on set. They also do so much more, including supporting young performers and babies and answering questions from families.

Before intimacy coordinators were an official title, parts of the work was often done by a combination of the wardrobe department, directors, and even stunt coordinators.

Last month, four B.C.-based intimacy coordinators made SAG-AFTRA's intimacy coordinator registry for film and television.

The Blue Hour, SkirtsAfire’s main stage production for 2020, is notable for bringing an emerging job description to a theatre stage in Edmonton.

The job is that of intimacy director (also known as intimacy coordinator, particularly in film and television). The position — which has gained prominence since the #MeToo movement — sees trained professionals ensuring that scenes involving nudity or sex, or other forms of touching, are done following rules of communication and conduct to ensure the safety and comfort of performers.

When Samantha Jeffery and Perry Gratton decided to form StoneMarrow Theatre, it was because they spoke the same theatre language.

After working together to produce and direct a 2017 Fringe show called A Beautiful View by Canadian playwright Daniel McIvor, they discovered a joint taste for risky, often heartbreaking material produced in a way that has meaning for both the artists and the audience.

Like all art, theatre is made to be entertaining, somewhat relatable, and most importantly, challenging. Late British playwright Sarah Kane took that last point to heart and became something of an outcast in the 1990s for her practice of ‘In-Yer-Face’ theatre—a form that broke away from conventional drama and was often criticized by the upper British middle class for being extremely violent and vulgar. Kane has three plays, Blasted, Cleansed, and Phaedra’s Love, that fall under the In-Yer-Face umbrella, but her 1998 play Crave—while still touching on darker themes such as suicide, loss, and assault—is much more subtle and poetic. Perhaps this is why it caught the eye of Perry Gratton and Samantha Jeffery’s little Edmonton theatre company, StoneMarrow Theatre. 

We sat down with Samantha Jeffery, one of our 2020 Nordic & Cloutier Family Innovation Award recipients. This annual award provides one local artist, group, or company with up to $2,500 in funding towards professional development, training, innovation, and/or special project development.

Sharing a first kiss with a stranger can be unnerving. Sharing that kiss in front of a captive audience can be truly daunting.

For decades, theatre and film scenes involving sex or intimacy were staged by directors with little experience in establishing safe boundaries for the performers. Or actors were left to their own devices.

Now there is a new player behind the scenes.

Since the "Me Too" movement, there's been growing demand for "intimacy directors" in stage and film productions. We talk to one about her work in the local theatre scene…

A chat with After the House Lights about the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

Our Summer Stock series continues: We sit down with Sam Jeffery of #YEGTheatreStats to chat about the gender balance of creative teams in Edmonton theatres, and how a display of hard numbers might make a difference for representation for future seasons.

Professional theatre artist Samantha Jeffery is here to discuss her pilot project: #YEGTheatreStats - a professional theatre database of jobs in the Edmonton theatre industry based on gender. We go over how Sam collects and presents her data; the nuance of creating categories and sub-categories in order to make her spreadsheet accurate, yet readable; and we also talk about how vital a public database of this sort is for those seeking to recognize their hiring trends within the Edmonton theatre community.