Theatre Education, Pedagogy, and Training

Fight director and theatre artist Danielle Rosvally and founder of Heartland Intimacy Design and Training and associate professor Kate Busselle come together to interrogate the concept of “certification” in fight direction and intimacy coordination by illuminating current training practices, opportunities, and programs in the field.

Jasmine Haley Anderson takes aim at fatphobic standards in the theatre industry, which begin fostering disordered eating in women from their earliest performance experiences.

Theatre artist Kofoworola Owokotomo describes her experience teaching theatre to students at the Concord School in Ibadan and advocates for more funding of arts education in Nigerian schools.

Multidisciplinary artist Ash Marinaccio sits down with the co-founder and artistic director of ASHTAR Theatre Iman Aoun to discuss this year’s ASHTAR International Youth Festival in Palestine.

Ann James talks to Adi Cabral about Cabral’s path though the intimacy industry. As a practitioner and professor, Cabral approaches intimacy choreography by centering harm prevention while working to create opportunities for students to identify and grow within their boundaries.

Ann James interviews Brooke Haney, creator of The Actor’s Warm Down, about closure practices in intimacy practice, when to pass work to someone else, and the need to represent queer stories through an authentically queer lens.

Ann James chats with Rocio Mendez about her work as an intimacy director, connections between intimacy choreography and fight direction, and getting excited about theatre’s fieldwide trend toward including intimacy specialists in production teams.

Ann James interviews Kaja Dunn, who works both as an intimacy specialist and a scholar of race and choreography, about her decade-long path through the intimacy industry. They discuss the way to bring intimacy professionals into a production process, the importance of citing Black women’s contributions to the field, and the need diversify who is telling stories on our stages.

Ann James sits down with Chelsey Morgan to discuss the way their background in multiple intimacy work methodologies informs their work as a facilitator, director, writer, and intimacy specialist. Across all their work, Chelsey curates a practice that individualizes approaches to intimacy based on the needs of both the actors and the story.

Ann James introduces the Rebuilding for the Future: A Convergence of Thought Leaders in Intimacy Practice series with this call for intimacy professionals to build a foundation of equity in the industry by interrogating available mentorship and training structures. This essay begins that work by highlighting the need for a diverse pool of training ideologies and methods; and the interview-based series that follows takes up that need by highlighting the perspectives of eight practitioners who navigate the intimacy industry in a variety of ways.

Emily McConnell calls for a common language to categorize designers’ collaborative relationships with directors. To find that common ground, theatremakers will have to reject the notion that each production requires a unique approach to collaboration.

Annie G. Levy shares how Emerson Stage works to make their season selection process as open, collaborative, and student-driven as possible.

Freelance theatre, text, and sound maker Panna Adorjáni shares her perspective on what it means to have a good university theatre program in Eastern-Central Europe through conversations with other graduates from that region.