With the production of bare opening later this week, we asked guest Intimacy Designer Dr. Emily Rollie a few questions about her process working on the show.
Dr. Emily Rollie’s theatre career began mostly as directorial work, with some intimacy coordination woven in for various shows she was directing. Intimacy choreography has emerged into the theatre world as its own separate field in the past few years, with productions bringing in third parties to help choreograph intimate moments between actors on stage. Dr. Rollie is an associate faculty member with Theatrical Intimacy Education, and a co-founder of Pacific Northwest Intimacy Collective, both groups of theatre-makers dedicated to creating a standard procedure around intimacy work in theatre.
With shows like bare, intimacy designers will come into the process and talk with the director about what their vision for the show is. They then work with the actors to figure out what their boundaries are so they can create appropriate moments on stage. In Dr. Rollie’s process, she “usually come[s] in with eight different ways to stage the intimacy, because you can tell a story in so many different ways with all of the actors’ individual boundaries. I really like to work with the actors about what their characters need and want in this moment and then try to marry that with what the director is hoping will happen with the storytelling.” Whether the actors are kissing or holding hands, it’s very important to make sure that both the actors and their characters are comfortable with what is being shown on stage.
When asked about her specific work on bare, Dr. Rollie shared enthusiasm about the storytelling that will be achieved through the intimacy: “I think that what’s exciting about bare is the queerness that is baked into this piece. I come at this through a feminist, intersectional, queer studies lens and I’m excited that we get to stage a variety of intimacy here, and that there’s a lot of consideration for queer relationships and grappling with that, but also showing that.” As far as challenges go, “we’ve been saying this jokingly in rehearsal that there are a lot of moving parts, quite literally to this show with the revolv[ing set]. So I think one of the challenges is figuring out the timing of the intimacy with the music and with the revolve.”
To see what working with an intimacy choreographer looks like on stage, join us for bare: a pop opera. The show runs November 10-13 on the Alexander Stage. Check out some of Dr. Rollie’s work HERE, and get your tickets HERE!