Mouthwash, bar fights and sex psychology: The life of a theater intimacy and fight director

All’s fair in love and war — when there’s someone hired to direct the fight and intimacy scenes.

Olney Theatre Center’s latest show, a production of the multiple Tony Award-winning musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” is a “Monty Python”-esque comedy about an Englishman who tries to kill his way through his family’s lengthy line of succession (all played by Tom Story, an ongoing gag) to secure the title of Earl of Highhurst.

As the title would suggest, plenty of both murder and love ensue. To bring those scenes to life accurately and thoughtfully, the theater company enlisted the help of Bess Kaye, a D.C.-based actor and fight and intimacy director.

“I think [there’s a] misconception that we are the fun police, when really, I love building sexy stories,” Kaye said. “We talk a lot about boundaries, but once we know boundaries, we play really unapologetically inside of them.”

While fight coordinators have long been part of the entertainment industry, intimacy coordinators have only risen in popularity in recent years. It’s not uncommon to see an intimacy director listed on a program at certain theaters, including ones in this area, but it’s by no means an industry standard yet.

In response to the #MeToo movement, Hollywood began to increasingly embrace the concept of hiring a professional to serve as a liaison between performers and production staff to protect actors from unwelcome sexual advances and to choreograph intimate scenes in a way that looks better on camera and expresses the story at hand.

A similar process has been happening in the national and local theater communities, where the role is often combined with combat expertise and uses the terms “director” or “choreographer” in place of “coordinator.”

Their purpose is to be thoughtful and intentional about what behind-the-scenes creatives are asking of performers, who all have differing comfort levels and potential fears about career retributions should they object to a direction.

“There’s so much more storytelling and leaps of faith and risks that you can take when you can trust that there is someone there to help make sure they’re done in a way that is safe and comfortable,” said Jacob Tischler, who stars as Monty, the titular “gentleman.”

A gentleman’s guide to onstage intimacy

Along his killing spree, Monty (Tischler) finds himself in a love triangle with his first love, Sibella (Sumié Yotsukura) and his newly deceased cousin’s widow, Phoebe (Sadie Koopman).

Were it a movie, “A Gentleman’s Guide” would be rated PG-13 for violence and sensuality, the Olney Theatre notes on its site. There’s no overt nudity or sex, but, as Yotsukura says, she’s rarely in a scene that doesn’t involve kissing or some show of sexual intimacy.

“Things like that can actually be incredibly uncomfortable and awkward,” Yotsukura said. “You’re enacting this stuff with someone that you haven’t known for very long and you’re pretending these things that put you in very vulnerable positions.”

On the first day of rehearsals, Kaye gives actors goodie bags containing a variety of oral hygiene products.

She refers to kissing as “kiss contact” and any form of touching as “making shape” to make the actions sound more clinical. In the same vein, she recommends discussions of anyone performing an intimate act use character names instead of the actors’ own. It’s all in an effort to help the actors distance themselves from the brain’s neurological wiring, which can’t tell the difference between pretend and real acts of intimacy.

Kaye also teaches actors that the neurological and physical responses that bodies can naturally have are involuntary. It helps them acknowledge with themselves and each other that what they’re about to do is, in fact, pretend.

“Romeo loves Juliet. The actor playing Romeo doesn’t love the actor playing Juliet,” Kaye said. “But when you make those shapes, the amygdala, your lizard brain, interprets it as real and meaningful. But your prefrontal cortex knows this is the character telling the story.”

Playing a lover and a fighter

One scene in “Gentleman’s Guide” involves a bar fight between Monty and a few pub patrons. It was Kaye’s job to ensure that each performer knew exactly when and how to move. In scenes depicting physical violence, safety is the No. 1 priority.

“If any one of us is not on the same page, we risk seriously injuring the other person,” Tischler said.

At one point in the bar scene, Monty falls to the ground. On opening night, the move elicited more than a few gasps from the audience — how can he do that once without hurting himself, let alone dozens of times over the course of the show’s run?

Tischler previously trained as a circus clown and has been performing variations of the same fall throughout his career. He maintained in conversations with Kaye that the right weight displacement and a focus on landing on muscle and fleshier body parts makes it possible to hit the stage floor with a loud thud six to seven times a week.

“He knows that he can substitute it for something a little bit less dramatic if it no longer becomes sustainable,” Kaye said. “But he’s really good at it and he really enjoys it, so it’s no problem for him.”

Are intimacy coordinators really necessary?

The rise in intimacy directing hasn’t been without pushback: If actors of earlier generations could do whatever needed to be done for the scene without need for third party intervention, why bring them in now?

The case for a more widespread adoption of intimacy directing roles ultimately boils down to the same reason actors have been taught stage combat techniques for centuries: boundaries and preparation keep performers safe.

The #MeToo movement brought an onslaught of anecdotes from entertainers across film, TV and theater who reported sexual harassment and abuse by powerful executives and scene partners on and off the screen or stage.

“Having intimacy coordinators prevents that from happening,” Tischler said. “Period.”

Audiences also stand to benefit from that work, the artists argue.

Yotsukura and Tischler are performing together for the first time, but their characters have known each other since childhood. The actors worked with Kaye to create small actions for the two to help them convey a longtime, innate closeness and familiarity, such as Monty tucking Sibella’s hair behind her ear.

Kaye calls actions like these “special moments” that performers can use whenever they feel the scene calls for it. That doesn’t mean improvisation is out the window — they argue it’s not only more thoughtful and intentional, but makes for a better show.

“What we do isn’t violence; it’s a story of violence,” Kaye said. “And what we do isn’t intimacy; it’s a story of intimacy. So I’ll block and choreograph things differently than they would be in real life, and ironically, that makes the audience able to come with us on that story.”