*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS
***
The Seven is one of the nation's
premiere short works festivals. It features seven fully produced world
premieres, utilizing seven different directors and a professional ensemble
cast. The scripts are reads by a jury of theatre professionals (blindly,
without any identification of the playwright) and the seven highest scoring
scripts will be produced. The overall Jury Award-winner will be awarded the
Andaluz Prize, and will receive transportation to/from and lodging at the
festival.
College of Saint Mary is
accepting one act play submissions for the New Works Initiative.
The selected script will be
published in the 2022 edition of The Saint Mary’s Review. The playwright of the
selected script will receive a $250 guest lecture stipend and will join the
cast via Zoom for table work. The winning script will receive a staged reading
in Spring of 2022. The staged reading will be performed live and also recorded
for digital release.
***
The Strides Collective, a new
Philadelphia-area queer theatre company, is seeking TWO (2) PLAYWRIGHTS a to
participate in separate one-month-long Emerging Playwrights Workshops over the
course of November or December 2021.
The Strides Collective Emerging
Playwrights Initiative is a new play development program designed to give a
safe and productive environment to “emerging playwrights,” those who have not
had their work fully produced before or may not have the resources or means to
have their work developed otherwise.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about
these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** INTIMACY ON STAGE ***
Imagine you’ve been cast in a
show. You’re excited to have the job and to meet your new castmates, and you’re
ready to dive headfirst into the material. You’ve memorized your lines,
attended every rehearsal, and you’re putting in the hard work necessary to put
on a good production.
But then it happens. In a
rehearsal room full of people, you find yourself facing your scene partner and
hearing the director tell you that you’re supposed to kiss them.
Yes, this moment is in the
script. You’ve seen it there in the stage directions. And sure, it’s an
important moment when it comes to telling the story. But you’ve only known this
person for a couple of weeks!
What if you’ve never kissed
someone onstage before? Or what if you have and you had a bad experience? How
is this supposed to be a comfortable situation? How are you supposed to feel
relaxed in this work environment?
Enter intimacy choreography: the
mysterious branch of the theatre world that has only recently become more
well-known. In fact, it was the use of intimacy direction on the hit Netflix
show Bridgerton that is really putting intimacy work on the map.
More...
https://www.onstageblog.com/editorials/intimacy-choreographers
***
Intimacy direction is a practice
in which a trained movement practitioner is employed for a stage or film
production to choreograph a simulated sex scene or an intimate moment. They are
the advocate for the actors in the room and act as a voice between them, the
director, and the rest of the crew.
This practice was codified by
Tonia Sina via her theater pedagogy graduate thesis, “Intimate Encounters;
Staging Intimacy and Sensuality,” in 2006 at Virginia Commonwealth University.
She eventually cofounded a nonprofit, Intimacy Directors International (IDI)
with Alicia Rodis and Siobhan Richardson in 2016, with its core pillars being
“Context, Consent, Communication, Choreography, and Closure.”
Rodis was one of the key players
responsible for bringing this practice to TV/film during the #MeToo movement
with HBO’S The Deuce. Cast member Emily Meade advocated hiring an intimacy
director to showrunner David Simon, in part because of past uncomfortable
on-set experiences.
More...
https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/intimacy-directors-more-important-than-ever/
***
In case you haven’t noticed, we
are experiencing a revolution in the way artists and entertainers rehearse and
perform intimacy.
The seeds were planted at least
ten years ago, when a few highly trained movement specialists started noticing
that they were often called upon to handle scenes of sexual intimacy in
rehearsal rooms. Working in isolation, they all realized that while many of
their existing skills could be applied to that task, new techniques were necessary
to choreograph intimacy in an ethical, efficient way. Today, Laura Rikard,
Chelsea Pace, Tonia Sina, Siobhan Richardson, and Alicia Rodis are leading a
sea change in how artists handle intimacy in rehearsal and performance.
Rikard, an assistant professor at
the University of South Carolina Upstate, first noted the need for new
technique in the early 2000s, when teaching young people who were raised to be
wary of bullying. These individuals had wholly different ideas about power than
the ideas that had typified the theatre world, in which the director would tell
someone what to do and they would do it. Rikard looked at what these students
had been taught in the anti-bullying movement in their schools, and one thing
she noted was how bullying had been defined as “anytime there is an imbalance
of power, and the person who has the power abuses that power.”
More...
https://howlround.com/art-and-craft-intimacy-direction
***
Intimacy direction became a
viable career with union standards in 2015, when three women founded Intimacy
Directors International. According to the non-profit's website, the
organization pioneers "the best practices for theatrical intimacy,
simulated sex and performance nudity for theatre, TV and film," and
rigorously trains and certifies new intimacy directors and coordinators (In TV
and film work, it's referred to as an intimacy coordinator).
Meyer-Crosby began doing research
for training and education in 2016, and came across IDI then. The non-profit
was just beginning to gain steam — a New York Times article about intimacy
choreography at Toronto's Stratford Festival came out in June 2017, and Rolling
Stone and American Theatre Magazine both profiled IDI in October 2018. By that
time, Meyer-Crosby had applied to be an apprentice with IDI (his workshop
photos are featured on the website).
While the IDI work pre-dated the
#MeToo movement, Meyer-Crosby credits that cultural conversation for the
growing interest in his field.
"#MeToo was the tidal wave
that carried what was already going on with intimacy direction,"
Meyer-Crosby says. "There's something about breaking the silence — not
even in terms of exposing abuse, but in terms of starting a conversation that
people feel awkward talking about."
More...
https://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/
