New Job for a New Century

Maya coaching "Bald Soprano" actors (Chron photo)

A new job for a new century: Intimacy Choreographer. The Chronicle profiles Maya Herbsman:

Her work, staging intimate scenes in plays, “could include a simulated sex scene, a kiss, a hug between family members, nudity, a first touch between ‘Romeo and Juliet’ … whatever feels vulnerable and intimate” ....

Herbsman makes those scenes “specific, technical, repeatable and highly choreographed.” She compares her job to fight choreography, in its use of standardized practices to keep actors and everyone else in the rehearsal room safe — physically, emotionally and psychologically.

In the era of the #MeToo movement, provoked especially by bad actors in the arts and entertainment industry, the Intimacy Choreographer fills a need that didn't seem important a few years ago:

“But I find when I work with actors over the age of 40, it sort of takes on this whole new meaning, because they realize all that they’ve been putting up with for their whole career. In that moment they realize the things that they didn’t know how to say no to, they didn’t know they could say no to, they didn’t know they were allowed.”

There are lots of choreographers on LinkedIn but so far no "intimacy choreographers." That omission should change in the near future.