Leader: Emily Rollie
Location: ONLINE – TBA
Online Session
The field of intimacy choreography and direction has evolved and veritably exploded in recent years as more and more theatre artists, companies, and institutions recognize the import and necessity of creating a culture of consent in rehearsal spaces. While much of the attention in the field of intimacy direction and education is necessarily on working with actors in rehearsal spaces, there’s an increasing need to expand conversations and training in consent-based practices to include theatre artists in other areas and across academic programs.
Indeed, Theatrical Intimacy Education’s selection of best practices are guided by two key ideas: to protect the most vulnerable in the room and to train everyone in the room. Thus, this praxis session takes up the idea of “training everyone in the room” to offer a sense of the ways that intimacy protocols and consent-based practices can be incorporated into the academic class room and across training programs. Drawing on my own work in creating and leading workshops across our department (as well as for faculty in disciplines beyond theatre) in addition to my work as an associate faculty member with Theatrical Intimacy Education, this praxis session examines and offers tools for the application of consent training and intimacy work as a way to continue to revolutionize the theatrical industrial complex and our training models.
Emily Rollie, Central Washington University
Emily Rollie, Ph.D. (she/her) is an artist-scholar and Associate Professor in Performance and Theatre Studies at Central Washington University. Her research focuses on intimacy choreography and consent-based practices, directing practice/theory, feminist and queer theatre, and contemporary Canadian theatre. She works professionally as a director and intimacy choreographer and is associate faculty for Theatrical Intimacy Education.