The EDIII Summit: Small Gathering Update and Next Steps

On August 10, 2020, Theatrical Intimacy Education, in collaboration with Princeton University, hosted the first gathering of TIE’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Intimacy Initiative (EDIII) Summit to explore intersections of race and intimacy choreography. This summit included leaders in the Theatre community, as well as History, Gender Studies, Education, English, Journalism, and African Diasporic Studies.

In recognition of Black Women as the originators of the philosophy of intersectionality and origins of the Me Too movement, centering the voices of Black Women has been integral to this work. We are processing the tremendously important conversations that we began in August and we are moving forward with the next phase of the EDIII Summit, which will be a larger gathering in March 2021. 

We are honored that the following participants have joined us as thought leaders to begin this conversation at our initial gathering in August and we are grateful to Princeton University for their ongoing support and participation.

Participants 

Silma Sierra Berrada, Class of 2022
Department of English, Certificates in African American Studies, Creative Writing, Theater, & Visual Arts, Princeton University

Belinda (Be) Boyd, MFA
Associate Professor, BFA Acting Coordinator, University of Central Florida 
KCACTF Region IV Vice-Chair

Nicole Brewer, MFA
Acting Faculty, Yale School of Drama

Indira Etwaroo, Ph. D.
RestorationART and The Billie Holiday Theatre

Bliss Griffin, MBA, JD candidate
National Diversity & Inclusion Strategist, Actors’ Equity Association

Nicole Hodges Persley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of American Studies~African and African American Studies, University of Kansas

Ann James
CEO, Intimacy Coordinators of Color

Janaka Lewis, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor of English, Director of Women's and Gender Studies Program, University of North Carolina-Charlotte 

Kelundra Smith
Freelance Theater Critic and Arts Journalist
Co-Chair, American Theatre Critics Association,  Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee

Meredith Suttles
Director of Development, TheaterWorksUSA 

Shontelle Thrash 
Director of Theatre, Professor of Theatre/Communication, Clayton State University

Delicia Turner Sonnenberg
Director, Founding Artistic Director of Moxie Theatre, San Diego (2004-2017)

Joy Vandervort-Cobb
Actor, Director, Voice Actor, Coach

Organizers

Kaja Dunn, MFA
Assistant Professor of Theatre, Head of Acting, Affiliate Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
Affiliate Faculty, Theatrical Intimacy Education 

Brian Eugenio Herrera, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Theater and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University 

Chelsea Pace, MFA
Assistant Professor of Theatre, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Co-Founder and Head Faculty, Theatrical Intimacy Education 

Laura Rikard, MFA
Assistant Professor of Theatre, University of South Carolina Upstate 
Co-Founder and Head Faculty, Theatrical Intimacy Education 

Update: Theatrical Intimacy Education’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Intimacy Initiative (EDIII) Summit

In early 2019, Laura and I partnered with Kaja Dunn, a noted and respected scholar on the subjects of Decolonization and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). We wanted to work with her on addressing the overwhelming whiteness in the developing field of intimacy specialization and in TIE’s own workshops . 

The first idea we pitched to Kaja was for an EDI scholarship, giving away two no-cost spots in all of our workshops. Kaja said it was a nice idea, but that throwing money at the problem wasn’t enough. We needed to ensure that our pedagogy was anti-racist and counter-traumatic. We needed to stop assuming that what we had was of value to the communities that weren’t in the room. We needed to deepen our practice and do a lot more listening. 

Working together with Brian Eugenio Herrera, we developed the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Intimacy Initiative, or The EDIII. The goal of The EDIII is to change who is in the room for conversations about theatrical intimacy, taking an intersectional approach, but centering the racist, colonialist power structures that prop up inequity in our field. 

When we launched the EDIII, we announced four major projects: that scholarship (The EDIII Scholarship), a partnership program (The EDIII Organizational Partnership), a program to develop intimacy trainings for self-identified BIPOC, and a gathering of scholars, artists, and practitioners to talk about race, intimacy, and building a counter-traumatic arts pedagogy (The EDIII Summit). 

We were days away from the EDIII Summit when the pandemic began to show up in the US and Princeton University, our host, announced that they were closing campus. We postponed the Summit and turned our attention to moving our courses, and our lives, online. 

In the throes of three major concurrent, and ongoing, events: a pandemic, an economic disaster, and a national reckoning around Anti-Blackness, racial injustice and police violence, the conversation we intended to have in March is more critical than ever. 

We had always envisioned The Summit to be a small gathering that would center the voices of Black women and be a seed for other larger gatherings and conversations. In that spirit, we are planning two small gatherings, the first a seed for the second, to eventually move into a more public space. 

The first event will be a very small group of Black women, gathered to discuss the role of theatrical intimacy and Race in this moment of reckoning. The second event will be for invitees of the original Summit, building off of the conversations from the first gathering. In recognition of the value of their time, labor, and expertise, all of our participants are being offered an honorarium as well as an additional amount to offset incidental costs. 

We remain committed to transparency and good citational practices. With the consent of participants, we will be working with the participants of both events to create publicly available documentation out of these conversations with findings that we think will be valuable to the broader community. 

We will continue to update as we move forward over the coming months. 

Best, 
Chelsea and Laura

Theatrical Intimacy and COVID-19

In the midst of a pandemic, theatres and production companies are making impossible choices.

Theatrical Intimacy Education is calling for the suspension of all rehearsals and performances of physical intimacy and touch for the foreseeable future to limit the transmission of COVID-19. 

Many theatres and production companies have put production on hold. Others have not, leaving it up to actors to say whether or not they are comfortable participating in moments of intimacy or touch. It is critical to remember that the power dynamics of production are such that actors are unwilling or unable to say no, even if the opportunity is presented to them. This is a result not only of those power dynamics but of economic realities and conditioning from years of being trained to say “yes.”

Our first priority is to support ethical practices. The ethical thing for theatres, production companies, directors, and producers to do at this time is to suspend all rehearsals or performances involving physical intimacy and touch. Leaving it up to the actors puts them in a terrible position where they are forced to choose between their paycheck and the physical health of themselves and the broader community. 

The CDC advises staying home. If that is impossible, changing a moment of intimacy from something realistic to a stylized moment performed at a distance may be an option. If you are unsure how to do that, please reach out. We are happy to schedule a time to speak with you about strategies for moving forward. We are offering ourselves as a resource for the community at this time. 

Please email us at contact@theatricalintimacyed.com with any questions.

Best,
Chelsea & Laura
Co-Founders and Head Faculty

PDF of Press Release can be found here.

Tomorrow’s Headline

Written with Jason Davids Scott, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film, Arizona State University

It’s hard to write about the headlines in the news.

Not because we are unaccustomed to headlines about people abusing their power in performance industries, or immune to the stories about careers thwarted, bodies damaged, and lives ruined because of pervasive, unchallenged, and ignored acts of sexual misconduct, humiliation, and abuse.

But we struggle to write because it seems so lacking to make a statement about abuses in the industry that reduce the problem to any one person, or any one company.  Focusing one’s wrath on an individual producer, director, executive, or other empowered individual only seems to serve to make each case seem so exceptional, so much a product of intentions and mistakes made by an individual and a small circle of people around them.  While such expressions of outrage may be cathartic, the ultimate impact may be unproductive.

Because we all know: this stuff happens all the time. It’s probably happening right now, and today’s headlines about a famous person finally being held accountable for unconscionable and indefensible abuses of power seem to be little deterrence to others who commit such acts far removed from the spotlight or the vision of a journalist investigating a story.

We focus on ethical practices on discussing, staging, and producing sexual intimacy in educational environments because we are tired of the headlines about the industries the students we train are preparing to enter, and we want to make a long-term impact.

We focus our work in academia, because we want to have the opportunity to address the problem at the root: teaching people best practices results in best practices, while ignoring worst practices only perpetuates the systemic invisibility of everyday abuses of power.

In our workshops, classrooms and rehearsal rooms, we see the producers, directors, choreographers, and performers of tomorrow. We teach every single one of them the importance of ethical behavior and to understand power dynamics that extend from director and producer to ensemble to individual performer to audience member. We give them the skills to be the good people in their own rooms in the future, to give them the physical and verbal language and skills to create and maintain their own safe creative spaces.  We believe that the skills that we give them also give them the confidence and fortitude to respond to unethical situations where abuse may occur with immediate focus and purposefulness.

If we don’t teach this work, we might be in the room with tomorrow’s headline.

We want today’s worst headlines to happen never - not because the conversation is being ignored and the individual symptoms have been identified, neutralized, and held accountable, but because the causes of the problem of systemic abuse and exploitation have been eradicated, and all creative artists have the language and ability to stop abuse every time it occurs . That’s why we do what we do. It’s about more than staging ethical, efficient, effective intimacy. It’s about teaching emerging artists that there is a better way.