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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the Theatre Podcast. Intimate personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and this episode is with Claire Warden, who's an intimacy coordinator, fight director, teacher, and so much more. She actually made history on Broadway by being the first intimacy coordinator on Frankie and Johnny and has just been making strides and making waves since then. She is involved with TV and film now. She has been involved with Jagged Little Pill and Slave Play and so many other things, even the upcoming West Side Story, and is helping actors bring their voice to the rooms when it comes to acts of sex and simulated sex. And she made a great point that actors' concerns when it comes to these sort of things during choreography, during staging, are oftentimes even discussed.

So an actor may end up doing something they're not entirely comfortable with and therefore can't bring their full and authentic self to the role and to the stage. Please check her out on idcprofessionals.com, which is the company she's involved with that can help actually other organizations or even you individually train to become an intimacy coordinator. And it's a great way to be involved in the industry as a profession without being on stage. A little bit of a trigger warning. We do talk about sexual assault. We talk about sexual abuse, lack of consent. Please find me on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast. Make sure if you're listening now and you're not already following on Spotify or Apple podcast or wherever you're listening, just hit that little subscribe button, follow along to the series. And now everybody, please enjoy this episode with Claire Warden.

[1:52] Alan Seales: Today's Drama Desk Award winning guest is an intimacy coordinator, fight director, teacher, and actress with over 20 years experience in theater, TV, and film across America and the UK. She worked as an intimacy coordinator and consultant on numerous television productions under various studios including HBO, Hulu, Amazon, Showtime, as well as major motion picture studios such as Sony and 20th Century Fox and has recently even worked on the series Mrs. Fletcher, Your Honor, Finding Alaska, Hunters, Billions, and even the feature film of West Side Story and many, many others. She recently made history as the first intimacy director on Broadway with Frankie and Johnny and has also worked as an intimacy director on the Broadway productions of Slave Play, The Inheritance, Jagged Little Pill, Linda Vista, West Side Story, and Company. Claire Warden, welcome to the theater podcast.

[2:43] Claire Warden: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. I also want to give credit where credit is due. Most of that bio was ripped off of IMDB, so whoever wrote that bio, you did a great job. Thank you.

[2:58] Alan Seales: Oh, did you write it yourself?

[3:03] Claire Warden: I wrote it myself. Yeah, it was a very good bio.

[3:06] Alan Seales: So, I want to start out with the whole intimacy coordinator as a profession because for those who don't know, like me being in New York and obviously being sort of on the press side of things when it was announced that like, oh, Frankie and Johnny has an intimacy coordinator, it was big news. It was like the first of its kind and then of course Slave Play and then there have been plays and musicals with nudity and simulated sex and these sorts of scenarios for ages, like it's from the beginning of time, obviously. But why is, first of all, okay, what is an intimacy coordinator and then why now is it the first time we're hearing about this sort of thing?

[3:49] Claire Warden: Oh, big questions. I like those. Let's dive in. So, let's just start with a definition. So, in fact, an intimacy coordinator is someone who works on TV and film and an intimacy director works in live performance. So, a similar job but in the different medias. And what both of those jobs are is that I like to think of it as three prongs, that we are there first and foremost to ensure that anything that the actors are doing when it comes to scenes of simulated sex, nudity or deeply intimate physical contact is something that they enthusiastically consent to and that they are maintaining agency over their body and what is seen of it at all times. And in doing that as well, we are there as a liaison between all of the different production departments, director, actors, wardrobe, stage management, set, lighting, publicity, to make sure that the information that is needed in order to keep the actor with their agency and respected and working within their consent is communicated to all the departments.

And then the other part of that is that we're craftspeople, we're physical storytellers. So, we're actually choreographing and helping to create scenes of simulated sex so that it looks like a sex act, but we're not actually asking actors to do any sex acts as part of their work. In the same way there with violence work, it looks like she punched her in the face, but we're not actually going to ask her to punch her in the face eight times a week because that's just not healthy. So, that's what we do, that's what it is in a nutshell. And why are we just hearing about it?

[5:48] Claire Warden: Well, intimacy direction as a discipline has been around in its beginning form since end of 2016, beginning of 2017. First kind of dreamed up and created by Tony Acina back in 2006, but then kind of codified together when a group of women, Tony and herself, Alicia Rodas and Siobhan Richardson got together and decided to actually like codify an approach to scenes of sex, intimacy and nudity that centered the actor, which was something that hadn't been done. In fact, the actor was often ignored in those scenes. And then it was continued to develop by the team, myself, Jessica Steinrock, and that's kind of the journey I have been on and many other artists have been working in their way to investigate how do we do these scenes in a better, healthier, more respectful, more consensual way.

It took a couple of years for people to be like, what? What is this thing? And as with all kind of fundamental changes within an industry or within a community, it takes a little while to get going. I will say that intimacy direction rides on the wave of a lot of social movements that came before it and that came during it. You know, right back in 2010, when Tarana Burke began the Me Too movement, which we didn't really hear on a global scale until 2017, when it started to become the platform for the exposure of what had been happening in the entertainment business. And the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been a community-led, grassroots movement for many years, also that kind of wave of social change, that wave of calling out to systems of power that it is no longer acceptable to victimize and abuse people that are lower in the power dynamic and how we can change that.

[8:18] Alan Seales: So was this something, as a profession, did you actively sort of seek this out or did you find yourself sort of falling into negotiating conversations or bringing this up? I mean, how does one sort of create this position when it didn't exist at all previously?

[8:34] Claire Warden: Well, I'll speak of my personal journey. The work I had been doing before I began doing work in intimacy direction, which was, I'd been an actor all my career, a fight director, and a teacher, and with a specialization in working and supporting actors with various traumas, emotional, physical, and psychological, and managing them in their work and a healthy way to work through them. And I have always been interested in physical storytelling, and choreography, and the use of our bodies and our craft, and in the uncomfortable place, the darkness, the uncomfortable, the nitty-gritty, as my colleague Sasha Smith says, the crunchy stuff. And so I, in a way, my, and I have always had a, a calling, or a, a feeling of purpose to move towards supporting and uplifting those that are, that fall victim and prey to the system.

So I think kind of my life was going along that track. I just happened to read about intimacy direction in a newspaper, in the New York Times. It was just the first article that was ever on intimacy direction, and reading it, me personally, I went, oh, that's why I'm here. Now I get it. It's all come together. And reached out at that point to Tanya and to Alicia and said, look, I think I see what you're doing. I want to offer my, my contribution to it. And I want to work with you. I want to help you. And so I joined it after it had begun, but, you know, kind of in that, in that beginning, next step, as it were. And then we all built it together. And the more that we reached out and heard of people doing similar work, the more those contributions allowed it to grow as a discipline.

[11:02] Alan Seales: That's really interesting because I would have, I mean, I guess this is my own ignorance. The older I get, the more I find that many of my friends, close or not, have gone through some sort of trauma, sexual trauma of one form or another, whether it's just plain old harassment to the extremes. And to me, it seems like as part of this job and a strange profession where even in today's day and age, when there are all these laws and protections in place to not be able to discriminate based on people's looks or religion or race or whatever the case is, we're still in a business where that basically has to happen. And to, to me, I feel like this, again, my own ignorance, I feel like it's surprising that it hasn't, that this hasn't come into play beforehand.

But then on the other hand, when you're looking at the rise of social media, the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, everything that just now in the last one to two to three plus years, very recently, we're, we're in a whole new space. And I guess too, beyond that is, is that 2020, pandemic comes, Broadway's shut down. Is this kind of like a reset button in your mind, or is this a pause? Because I know that like from a, from a racial equity standpoint, everyone's, there's all the stuff that I'm hearing about, about reform and show me the receipts and, and making sure that there is diverse, equitable inclusion going forward. But I haven't really heard anything on the sexuality or the intimacy side of things of like, we're going to make sure we have this type of person. And is there, I mean, so like, are we going to guarantee that there's an HVAC supervisor, so no one gets COVID, but is every company also going to have an intimacy coordinator moving forward?

[13:17] Claire Warden: Right. Well, I mean, that's, that's a great question. That's a question that's been around for a while. And to just speak briefly to your earlier point about that it, we've only just started hearing about this the last couple of years or, or, or the, you know, a lot of people live in that trauma and yet it's not being the theater industrial complex doesn't work in a trauma informed way without going into an entire hours long conversation on power systems of power and power dynamics. I think what we, what is becoming very clear and what I think we're, we've, we're starting to see is that the visible system, so the three systems of power, visible, hidden, and invisible, right? The visible systems of power, right? Which are all the rules and the laws and the things we can see and point to and say, oh, that's why this is like this. Underneath those are the hidden,

[14:15] Claire Warden: In systems of power, which is the people that control the agenda and what gets changed and what doesn't. And without representation and integrity in that layer of power, change is very hard to happen. I think what we've started to see is that, you know, the reason that the kind of the entertainment-based wave of the Me Too movement was that people started to come out and without turning back, named the abuse and the corruption within those systems of power. And it's not that actors had only just started speaking up because people have been speaking up about this for ages. It's just that we finally started to make the system and those in power listen and take action. And that comes from the empowerment of the people that are in that mix, but also from this awareness of the need for systemic change and with a view to, is this a pause or is this a reset?

Both. I think it, I think the pause has allowed us to consider a reset, necessarily. You know, urgency is one of the most, in my opinion, one of the most powerful tools of oppression and of coercion. And you'll see it throughout the entire industry. And it's something that is a very deft tool that's stopping us, like making sure that we can't just stop and look around and go, hang on a minute. This, this doesn't seem okay. Maybe we should like do something about this, but that no, no, no, we've got to go. We've got to go. You've got to get the job. You've got to put the show on. You've got to do that. Yes. Yes. Definitely. We'll absolutely talk about that next month, next year. So what I think the pandemic has given us or has manifested is that moment where there was no work going on and amidst all the personal dealing with that.

I know I personally had the opportunity to step back and really look at not only my work that I do, but how it fits into the system, which was brilliantly highlighted by the enormous layer of labor that was done by the collection of artists that created the We See White American Theater demands and all the other artists that have been, you know, in 2020 calling for the reckoning and the change in the system. I think this goes hand in hand. I think this is, you know, the labor that's been done there calls for a recognition of the basic humanity of actors, stage managers, people within the system, people that are often the bottom of that power dynamic, and the recognition that the white supremacy damages everybody in the system, including the white people.

So that, as we're looking at, you know, racial equity, we also, you know, there's intersectionality. We also need to look at equity for disabled people. We also need to look at equity for gender parity. We also need to look at equity for all bodies within consent and sexual storylines. In fact, We See White American Theater does mention intimacy directors five or six times in the calling for them to be in the room. And of course, I think they are alongside with cultural consultants who, you know, for whatever identity you're either are the characters of the story you're telling or the actors that are telling that, and that right now we need experts that have deeply studied how to create a consent and equity-based room to guide all of our projects until we learn that as a standard.

And it's a lot of unlearning we have to do, you know, there's a lot of conditioning and there's a lot of learning and we now have to look at it and go, Oh, we're going to unlearn that. And we're going to look at it in a new way. It's unconscious bias. I mean, it's, it is unconscious bias. A lot of it. It's also an enormous amount of repression of knowing or questioning, like knowing the right thing or questioning something in a lot of silence that's been there. And a lot of just understanding outside of your own frame of reference, what will make a room a healthy and safe place to work for individuals. This is, this is fascinating to me and it's all brand new. I've never been in a, actually I'm going to interrupt you there.

It's brand new on a large scale. I think it's worse than doing. Brand new to me. Yeah. As well, where I was going with this was it is, I used to be an actor and I've been on stage in many different things and I've had to, I've had to, I think the most sexual I ever had was three pages of making out with Rizzo when I was Knicky in Grease. Right. So it's not like that's fun and it's playful. And like, and actually now that I see say this, she was, um, it took her a while to feel comfortable. She was a shy, Rizzo was shy, very shy. And it was not like, I've done other things where I've had to kiss people and it's like, all right, let's just get this over with and we're fine. And then like she kept pushing and pushing it back cause she just wanted to get comfortable with everything.

And, and the director kind of said like, you just got to do this. Like you got to get into it. And I think that was probably not the best thing for him to do in front of a room full of people. Right. So anyway, put that aside. Um, cause now I realize should have had an intimacy director there. What I was going to say was this was new to me and I haven't had to go through like a nudity or simulated sex scene, but I guess we could use it at any point. But so where I was going with this was that I, my question is if, okay, so Frankie and Johnny, right. So obviously there's, there's nudity there. And I know in film when there's a nude scene, they like strip out the crew, they go down to a skeleton sort of crew and make sure only the bare minimum is in there, whatever the case is.

And so how does, how, how do you start to approach the conversation with like Audra McDonald about like, what are you going to be comfortable with? How should we do this? Obviously in a rehearsal room, it's full lights up there, you know, there's no lighting, there's really bare minimum sets. Like where does the process start?

[21:28] Claire Warden: Right. As you said, there are on the process starts with the conversation with the actors, right? Well, in fact first is a conversation with the director to understand what their vision is, what they're thinking for the scenes, if they have anything specific that they're wanting or imagining. So we get, we're guided by their directorial vision and requests. And then it's the conversation with each of the actors individually that is just about great. What do you, what's, what do you consent to? What do you not consent to? What's like, and it's an enthusiastic consent. You know, in my book, no, like, uh, sure, I guess, right. That to me is a no. So, so it's then these are the requests. This is what the script is asking.

This is, you know, our director has these ideas. And it's a conversation about what, what works for you. What is, what is something that you consent to? And then once we have that information, that's what we work with, right? I said, there's a thousand ways to tell a story. So we then the work then becomes great. How do we tell the story that we're all wanting to tell? What is the story you want to tell first of all? And how do we tell it within the boundaries of each of the actors that are involved? We do have closed rehearsal rooms. So that means that whenever we're working on scenes of intimacy, that we go down to only the people that are essential to work on that scene or in the room director, stage manager, intimacy director, the actors that are directly involved in the scene and anyone else that they might have requested as an advocate in the room.

And we work at it in stages, with regards to nudity. Often we don't go to nudity until we're actually in tech in the theater. Cause there's, there's the need, right? We'll work in, you know, like a nude colored tank tops and leggings or bicycle shorts or something. If we need to practice, you know, removing of costumes or things like that. And then once we move to the theater itself, well, then there's another conversation because you have a whole new set of people coming in your crew that you haven't met before. So then it's a conversation about, when we work on that scene, who's in the room, who's not in the room, securing the theater. When's the moment where we'll do the nudity for the first time within that process? And what are the actors' requests around that?

[24:06] Alan Seales: Well, that, yeah, that's very, it's very, I guess, methodical and you, you know, you hear these interviews with like, was, was it, was so-and-so a great kisser or does, was it awesome to have a scene with what the other person and like all the answers are just like, it's not fun in the way you would think it'd be fun because there's lights and a camera in your face and the room is under your armpit. And you know, there's all these things that people don't see and they don't understand. And it's funny because, you know, and it's probably just because of our whole society's like, um, attitude towards sex, right. But, but no one, I don't know if anyone's ever asked like, um, you know, was that cake that you were eating that too?

Was that amazing? Where's the cake from? What's it like to eat that cake? You know, they don't like, they don't ask like, how good do those flowers smell? You know, when you pick the flowers up and you smell when he gives you the roses, are those real roses? Does he pick those roses himself? You know, so, but we have this, you know, because our society has so much pressure, so much objectification and so much shame around sensuality and sexuality. Um, it, it becomes, you know, taboo and heightened and titillating. Um, and there's that, and I think there is a lack of understanding, um, from like an audience point of view, from a lay person's point of view, exactly because we have not been talking about doing sex and sexuality and nudity for actors.

We have not been open about that. And so audience members just assume that it's all real. Um, because there's been, you know, there's countless, um, behind the scenes videos or, or documentaries or YouTube things on how they got that great stunt or how they did the fight in, you know, Captain America or whatever. And you see the craftsmanship and you see the stunt coordinators like lining up that look and putting in the effect afterwards. The audiences have started to understand that aspect. So I wonder if just because we haven't, because we've not even been talking about it with the actors, let alone the audience, that there's that kind of lack of understanding of what it is like. It's like, it's like any other deeply intense physical action that an actor has to do, within their role.

Um, also coupled with, you know, centuries of cultural historical baggage and the individual person's own experience of, you know, of sex, sexuality, oppression within sex, any abuse, um, and sexism, uh, in our society. So, you know, I, my hope is that as this role as intimacy director, intimacy coordinator becomes better known, um, and more widely talked about and you see it on the credits of, or in the program, people will start to, the general public will start to understand, um, a little more of the actor's journey and what it is, what we're actually asking these people to do when we ask them to do these scenes and not that we shouldn't ask them because it's a, you know, it's a deep and fundamental part of the human journey and, you know, what a lot of stories have a lot to say about, but, um, we need to kind of respect the, what we're asking to get the craft that then tells the story and being really aware of what stories we're telling and how we're, what messages we're putting across with the stories we tell.

[27:50] Alan Seales: We're going to take a short break. Stay tuned for more of the episode.

[28:06] Claire Warden: So you, you have a background in fight direction too. And that a fight, a fight director is essentially a choreographer. You're choreographing a fight and it has to look real and it has to be the exact same eight times a week to make sure that nobody gets hurt. And you do a fight call before every show so that it's never forgotten and all that. And.

[28:31] Claire Warden: For the intimacy direction, intimacy choreographer, or choreography, I guess, I talked with Catherine Gallagher about this. She was on the podcast, gosh, right when COVID hit. A year ago now. And we were talking about it, and her number where she's just talking about her sexual assaults in the show, I mean, it's a powerful show, full stop, but her number, too, is just mind-blowing, and she's on stage doing this great number, and the ensemble's hands are all over, and I, we talked about this, and it doesn't surprise me now, but I guess at the time she told me that every single beat of every single person's hand is exactly where it should be at that moment. Like, everybody was choreographed everywhere, so that she knew where everyone's hands were at all times.

And that, to me, that's no easy feat, right? So, I mean, that sort of thinking back to that rehearsal process, or going through all that, do you remember how long it took, and I know without giving away personal details that Catherine wouldn't want to share, is, do you remember having this conversation with her about, like, what are we going to do here? How many people is too many people? Where should these, does it matter if it's a male hand or a female hand? Like, does all this come into play?

[30:03] Claire Warden: Yes, and, you know, I actually joined the production after they had begun work, right? So they began, like, up in Boston in ART, so they had a structure of the choreography and the piece beforehand, so when I joined in the Broadway production, it was a little bit of, kind of, going back and looking at what we had, and do we need to tweak anything, and what kind of conversations do we have? So it was a little bit of a not typical approach, but yes, in that situation, you're also working with the choreographer, right? And Labi is a genius, like, an incredible choreographer. And so, at that point, you know, our work kind of melds together, and we're finding our pathways together to create this piece of movement.

But the conversation is, you know, great, this is what we have, how's it working for you? What areas are, like, 100% no-go areas, no matter what or who? What areas are, it depends, or, you know, with this kind of structure, that's okay, and what are the requests that will make this easier? And really, like, methodically going through, with the number at the end, where you have a number of actors who would come forward and have hands all over their body, right? So each individual, each of those actors, has their own body, their own needs, their own experience, their own boundaries. So we have a conversation with each of those. And then we adapt and adjust to fit their requests. And the reason that we do that is above everything else, to allow the actor to do their best work.

That's the ultimate goal. We want to create the situation where the actor can do their best. If, as an actor, you are trying to manage something that all of the anxiety, the fear, the pain, that comes up when your consent boundaries are being crossed, whether knowingly or not, whether in a threatening manner or just because there's a hand there, especially in that kind of story where it's already a story of sexual assault. And if there's a movement, or if there's a contact with your body that is not fully consensual for you, there's a lot that we have to do, our psyches and our bodies, to manage the message that is coming up. Whether it's a fight, flight, or freeze response, or just this is not okay, this is not okay, this is not okay, but I have to manage it because I don't think I can say anything about it.

It's a lot of energy that takes. And it's a cumulative energy. So it builds night after night after night. And you go in and you're like, everything's good, I'm going to do this scene. And then you get to the second half and you're like, okay, here comes that number, right? I've just got to grit my teeth and get through it. If all of that energy that you're using to manage a consent violation night after night in front of a thousand people, if that was free for you to just use in your acting and in your commitment to the work that you do, you'll see amazing performances like we saw in Jagged Little Pill, like we see in those artists. When you give the artists the opportunity to be free and respected, they will give you the world with their performance.

And that's all we're trying to do. When an artist is empowered, when an artist feels safe, they can do really dangerous, bold, courageous work. And she got a Tony nomination out of that performance. And fully deserved, yes. Obviously, hopefully a Tony win, yes.

[34:35] Claire Warden: Part of that as well, also just to kind of talk about the cumulative effect, right? Something that we have to consider, especially when we're looking at theatre and shows and something like a Broadway show, which runs from, you know, unless a world pandemic interrupts it, runs for months and months and months. That would never happen. Yeah. We have to consider as well the kind of cumulative psychological and physical effect of telling a story of sexual assault, rape, again and again and again, night after night after night. If you don't have strong, what we call closure practices, which are ways of kind of opening up that workspace and closing it down at the end of the night so you don't take it home with you, you can kind of release it and it doesn't become part of your life and you're not blurring those lines between your cast mate and the character that they play and that you're able to step away from that story and live your life outside of theatre.

And you're not creating good self-care routines to help you do that. It can become very daunting. It can build up and up because our psyches cannot tell the difference between something that's actually happening to us and when we go through that imaginative journey of telling that story. So that's also something that's really important that hasn't been talked about a lot is just that aspect of actors warm up, they really cool down and there's a lot of emphasis put on like you've got to cry or it's not real, you've got to if you're not suffering, it's not authentic, you've got to put your whole self in. But then there's very little teaching on how to get your whole self back or put yourself back together and be able to live your life outside of it.

[36:31] Alan Seales: You're almost a therapist as much as you are an intimacy director.

[36:39] Claire Warden: I know you don't want to call yourself a therapist for legal reasons but you've got to get into these stories with people. You've got to get into their yeses and their noes and I guess you draw the line I would assume at the why. Nobody's required to tell you why they do not want to consent. I'm sure that you just have to be a listener. You have to help people explore things because my assumption here, again could be ignorant, is that as an actor I want to be able to perform. I want to be able to deliver and if I'm not comfortable with something that I know either the other actors or the director for good reason. If there's a good request behind this and I'm just not there yet comfortably but there's got to be a way to talk with you and work through this and get myself to the point where I can be safe and can deliver hopefully the best performance that is capable to be delivered.

[39:03] Claire Warden: We work in a trauma-informed way which basically means that we acknowledge and know that it is likely that most people have some kind of trauma effect in them and that we make a space to understand and support that. Very different from a therapist or a trauma worker who works to help people solve, resolve or work their way through their own trauma. That is not our job. That should not be the job of anybody in an audience. That's just not. Directors don't do it. Stage managers don't. That's not the job. But in order to create a consent-based space we need to be trauma-informed and that simply means that we can provide the space for those that are if the effects of their trauma come up in their work or if it's present or if a storyline is particularly potent or triggering, that we're creating a space for them to use the tools they already have to work in a way that is safe.

As it comes to actors who are trying to get there but maybe not quite there yet, that's part of the actors' work in resilience and managing their own systems. I like to talk about it as a scale. It's called the discomfort scale. For me there's a difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe or unhealthy. I don't actually ask my actors if they're comfortable with something. I ask them if they are confident with doing this particular move or this particular situation. Because really we don't often strive for comfort when we're making art. It's not like we go to see a show and we're like my God, that was the most comfortable show I have seen in years. Two and a half hours of total comfort.

If it hasn't been that scene, I might not go back and see it again. It's your Mama Mia's. Often we're asking those questions, those exact questions that might be uncomfortable or might be shining a light on things that other people don't want us to. We're asking the hard questions, the powerful questions, the deep questions. We're challenging something. That's not always comfortable. Even if it's a fun, easy storyline, you look at some of these musicals, especially for example, that are like a marathon for some of these actors to do. Not necessarily comfortable, but what we want to make sure is that the actors are in control of how far down the discomfort scale they go. One end is like, easy, you could do this all day.

Moving down the scale, it's getting a little awkward, this is painful, scary, wow, this is a lot. But there's an end of that scale which then turns into pain. We don't want to spend a lot of time in pain. Physically, you can often tell the difference between something that's uncomfortable and something that's painful. The stone in your shoe is uncomfortable. The shot of glass in your foot is painful. Your body sends the message, stop, this is dangerous, or we don't want to do this for much longer. But the other side of pain, this is a small one, but the other side of pain is trauma. And we never want to go into creating trauma or re-engaging in trauma. So that line between the uncomfortable and the pain, that's a line that can be moved up and down the scale, depending on the support we give the actor, the way they're working through their own life and needs, the trust they have in their fellows, the conversation that you've had beforehand so they know what's going to happen, they know what's being asked, they know who's going to be in the room, all of that information can allow actors to do uncomfortable, sometimes even a little scary work without causing themselves actual psychological, emotional or physical harm, especially if it is on a continual basis. So that's something that I really think is important for actors on their own journey to understand. But then as creatives that are helping them, that's a help, it's a useful tool.

[42:46] Claire Warden: Just be like great, so where are we on that scale and what would help you go back into uncomfortable as opposed to pain? Or we want to move our little line further up with what you need that would give you the confidence to go to the, or is this a no, that's just against my consent, and we're going to find another way to tell the story. So taking that, what you just said to something like Slave Play, where that's all right, right? Which is, I was going to say intimacy director to me, there's many different levels of intimacy, and it doesn't have to be sexual, and it doesn't have to be physical, I assume. And in something like Slave Play, there's the systemic trauma and inherited trauma that we're dealing with in this, and coincidentally, this comes out and makes waves, you know, the summer before George Floyd is murdered, and Black Lives Matter is in all over the place again.

And obviously, this is something that people of color have lived with for their entire lives, and people who present as white don't often have that kind of intimacy problems, right? So, or problems is not the right word, challenges, we'll change that, strike, strike problems, intimacy challenges. And so when you're approaching Slave Play, there were simulated sex scenes in there, but it was like the sexual side of it was almost a farce because that was sort of the, you know, the show within the show sort of thing, right? But then when it got real, holy shit, did it get real? Yes. And so, okay, so talk to me about that then. Where do you start to approach it? It's not, see, I don't know what type of intimacy I'm, I want to call it. What do you, how do you categorize that type of intimacy?

[45:05] Claire Warden: Well, I would say in a production like Slave Play, you have a number of things, and this is exactly why and how Jeremy wrote the play, the intersection and the very fact that it is so hard to pull apart the sexuality and the sexual journey and the racial connotations and complications of mixed-race intimate couples sitting in the pool of systemic racism. And so when you have a situation like that, you know, for my job, my job is to be there as the creator and the holder and the steward of the sexual scenes, but it must go alongside with the understanding and the support of experts or those with lived experience on the racial conversation, right? And so I am my co-intimacy director, to me, Stevia Johnson, we both work together as fight and intimacy directors, and they're a person of color.

And I think that it's really vital to offer the expertise and the experience and the support I can in my lane. And we were very lucky in that, you know, to be helmed by Robert O'Hara, who is an incredible director who really did hold that space for the racial conversation incredibly and deeply. And there was a lot of listening and learning for me to do in that space and a lot of guidance of, here I offer in relation to the story that I'm hearing you want to tell, here's the technicalities I offer, here is the support systems that I will build to hold this work. And so, and what, and here's the constant communication of everybody involved to really clarify the story that we're telling, right?

And the opportunity of that show is that, yes, the first act, the fun you can have with sexual scenes and like what's the tone we want here? How can we make this a little more ridiculous? Or can we push that envelope? Or what is it we want to say about that? But then also in the same play to be able to have the deep gravity and complexity of the last scene, when it really dives into that kind of authentic painful discoveries. It's a joy of a show to do. But I will say if that's a situation where you need a cultural consultant or you need those in the room that are helming that with lived experience to be able to tell that in a responsible way and to weave those stories together.

[48:02] Claire Warden: Slave Play still to this day is one of my all-time favorite shows I've ever seen, especially, I mean literally and metaphorically holding up the mirror on myself, right? And it came at such a great time in my life and I hopefully in society, and God, I hope it comes back when theater comes back. But do you have a kind of a moment or a show, whether it be theater or film or TV or whatnot, where you felt like, or I was going to ask, like if you have a favorite, but I think that's kind of cliché. Let's go the opposite direction. And what I was going to say, like, do you feel like there was a challenge you didn't know how to approach? And what, like something that was the most difficult for you to approach conversationally? Or is it just starting the same and dissecting everything the same way and starting at the basics?

[49:02] Claire Warden: That's a great question. I'm going to answer it in two different ways because I'm like that. I will say rather than a particular show that was really difficult, what I have, what's really clear, what's really poignant to me is that at the beginning of this journey, the most difficult thing for me was balancing and managing various resistances to the work and to the request and the setting up of a consent-based process from all different areas of the production team. And now that we're a couple of years on and it's known and many people have worked with an intimacy director before or at least have friends that have or know a bit about it, and there's beginning more acceptance of the work, to then be able to be in a room and not manage, not having to be managing the resistance and how it's trying to undermine the work, but simply to, even if it's just great, if you've not done this before, explaining how it works, okay, and off we go.

That makes what that does is free up a lot of my time and energy for the work and is, you know, to be honest, a lot less emotionally draining for me. You know, having to kind of fight at the same time as like do the work, have one hand trying to fight for the advocacy of the work, also trying to keep the actors safe. So that, you know, that's something that's really struck me. There have certainly been, you know, particular moments of like how are we gonna do that on stage? It's starting to be a kind of amusing habit that each time I read one of Jeremy's plays, because I've worked on a couple now, each one I read of Jeremy Harris's play, there's always a piece there in the script I read it and I'm like, how the hell are we gonna do that?

There's like always, I'm like, what? So I certainly think that, you know, just the technical challenge in Slave Play of the Philip Alana dildo insertion, right? How? Because it was such a large dildo because there were mirrors, it had to be comically large, yeah, and it was like mirrors at the whole of the back of the stage, so you lose that opportunity for masking and you have audience like close up, you know, that was a real challenge. And then you move to a Broadway house, because I worked on it both off-Broadway and on-Broadway and at Yale. So then moving to a Broadway house, we've kind of got it sorted, but then there's a mezzanine and then there's like whole different sight lines. So that was a particularly like fun, interesting challenge to really get that to look authentic and do the job and acknowledge like whilst there's a lot of laughter around it, the really deeply damaging trope of racial harm that that action carries with it, and how to kind of honor that and hold at the same time in the same space the kind of pushing it to the ludicrous, like holding those together so that we're respecting both needs at the same time and making space for all of that. Yeah, that was fun challenging.

[53:15] Alan Seales: I could imagine. I could, oh gosh, I don't even want to get into what you tried that didn't work. All right, so we'll wrap this episode up with the three standard closing questions I ask everybody at the end of the episodes. The first one here, very simply, is just what motivates you?

[53:37] Claire Warden: Oh, motivates me? Making the world a better place. That sounds so cheating. No, no, scrap that. What motivates me is obstinate hope.

[54:03] Alan Seales: Okay, second question then. What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[54:12] Claire Warden: Listen to the voice inside, it's right, and ask for help.

[54:30] Alan Seales: Great. Last question then, if you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[54:37] Claire Warden: Holy moly, that's cruelty in the extreme. One show for the rest of my life? I think right now, I think it would be Slave Play. It's pretty damn good. I don't think I can ever stop learning from that.

[54:45] Alan Seales: All right, and from those people, like the actors, and it's such a brilliant, brilliant play all around.

[54:51] Claire Warden: I agree. I think it's wonderful. So where can we find you on social media?

[54:58] Claire Warden: You can find me on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, Claire Warden, the Claire Warden, at Claire Warden. You'll find it's me, I'm in a red shirt. And you can also find me on my company, IDC, Intimacy Directors and Coordinators. We run a, we train the next generation of intimacy directors and coordinators, and we consult and train in academia as well, so come find us.

[55:26] Alan Seales: Yeah, so I was actually going to ask you if we wanted to become an intimacy coordinator, an intimacy director. You mentioned your website, but what's the actual URL of your website so people can check it out?

[55:37] Claire Warden: Yeah, idcprofessionals.com. idcprofessionals.com, that's it. Yeah, we offer a full certification program for both intimacy directors and intimacy coordinators, takes you right from the beginning all the way through everything you need to know. And we also offer webinars and information booklets and stuff on there all about the work and whether you're just interested in learning more about a consent-based process, like the first levels of the training for anyone that's just like, I want to know more about how to work on scenes of intimacy, how to create a consent-based room, or if you're like, I want to do this for my job in my life, you just keep working with us. So yeah, come join us and learn with us.

[56:28] Alan Seales: I love that. All right, thank you so much. You can get more of me at thetheaterpodcast.com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter, theater underscore podcast. Please leave a rating and a review. You can find more links to subscribe at the website. This has been edited by Matthew Hendershot. Thanks to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro music you're hearing right now. And Claire Warden, thank you most of all. I have really enjoyed this. This has been so enlightening.

[56:47] Claire Warden: Thank you. Me too, it's lovely talking with you.