Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

This isn’t a nightclub or an orgy. The men and women are actors. And they’re taking part in an “intimacy workshop” — part of a growing trend to carve out safe spaces in the theater and film industries.

At the helm is Ita O’Brien, a London-based “intimacy coordinator.” A former dancer and director, she — along with other intimacy coordinators and specialized stunt people — is emerging as a powerful influence in an industry grappling with the fallout of #MeToo.

O’Brien, 53, has worked for the likes of HBO and Netflix. And her approach, increasingly in demand globally, has found particular resonance in Australia, where a laddish culture persists in a world of theater and film that tends to be insular and has recently come under fire for protecting the status quo.

Accusations of sexual misconduct like those against the Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush — first by actress Eryn Jean Norvill, who accused him of deliberately stroking her breast during a 2015-16 production of “King Lear,” and later by the “Orange Is the New Black” star Yael Stone — have rocked the industry in Australia.

Yet the #MeToo movement has been slow to take off, largely because the country’s defamation laws heavily favor the accused.

O’Brian says the global entertainment industry should have a code of conduct so that performers can operate in the workplace “without fear” — a need illustrated by several cases that made headlines in recent years.

The 2013 film “Blue is the Warmest Color” was applauded for its raw and exposing depictions of lesbian sex. But one of its main stars, French actress Léa Seydoux, later described the filming as “humiliating” and said it had made her feel “like a prostitute.”

Three years later, with the #MeToo movement prompting a reconsideration of previously accepted norms, an infamous anal rape scene in the 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris” was condemned as akin to sexual abuse. The scene, involving butter and a baguette, had been sprung without prior warning upon the 19-year-old actress Maria Schneider, who later said that during the scene she had felt “raped.”

To avoid any compromising situations — and to help productions safeguard against litigation or accusations of inappropriate behavior — O’Brien has created a series of “Intimacy on Set” guidelines for directors, producers and actors.

They include always having a third party present in rehearsals, agreeing in advance on areas of physical touch and nudity levels, employing modesty patches and pouches to ensure that bare genitals never touch, and using proper terms for body parts and sexual activities.

The guidelines also say that intimate scenes — whether they involve full simulated intercourse or the smallest physical contact — should be fully choreographed, and that during rehearsals actors should verbally consent to all physical contact before it is made.

And Hollywood is on the same page: HBO announced in October that all future productions involving sex scenes would have an intimacy coordinator present, and North American nonprofits like Intimacy Directors International, founded in 2016, are gaining traction.

O’Brien was partly inspired to travel to Australia after connecting with Safe Theatres Australia, an organization co-founded by Norvill and Sophie Ross, an actress and activist, that aims to combat sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination. In 2017, they delivered a dossier to major Australian theater companies containing 58 anonymous testimonies describing such infractions.

Shelley Casey, 31, a Sydney-based actress who attended O’Brien’s workshop in Sydney last November, described the atmosphere in Australia’ film and theater worlds as “Just get on with it — don’t cause a fuss.”

Recalling rehearsals in which she was made to perform intimate moments as other production members chanted and whooped, she compared the expectation to improvise sex scenes to an era when fight scenes were also improvised — leading to unsafe rehearsals.

“Imagine the days when they put a sword in your hand and said, ‘Just wing this fight scene!’” she said, whereas the Intimacy on Set guidelines give “everyone the rules, the boundaries, the language, the communication.”

Many actors feel that they have no choice but to go along with a director’s instructions, particularly in an industry rife with power imbalance and celebrity worship.

O’Brien says she has heard plenty of horror stories: actresses unexpectedly told to remove undergarments on set, and sex scenes veering out of control while the camera is rolling, leaving one party feeling taken advantage of.

To give power back to the performers, her workshops focus on consent.

In Sydney, actors paired off with a director to create an intimate scene, stating out loud where they were happy to be touched, and where they were not happy to be. The key was to ask, when undoing a belt or stroking a person’s thigh: “Is this OK?”

“It just means there are no assumptions made,” O’Brien said, “and you have that moment of agreement and consent of touch, and everyone feels taken care of and happy.”

As a team, the groups then blocked every step of the scene so that nothing was a surprise.

Stemming abuse is not the only issue. Many at the workshop — where participants mimicked the mating rhythms of horses and gorillas in a bid to loosen up — said that using standardized guidelines also lessened the awkwardness of sex scenes.

Last year, O’Brien worked on the British set of the upcoming Netflix comedy “Sex Education,” which follows the trials of a teenage virgin and was released in January. The show’s director, Ben Taylor, said it was this “initial breaking down of taboos” that was most valuable, as well as the open discussion of sex scenes.

“Our shoot was far better for us having met Ita,” Taylor said in a telephone interview. “I think she is about to become very busy.”

He said that O’Brien had created a critical space to discuss fears and anxieties with a young, often inexperienced cast. And, he stressed, the focus was not just on physical safety, but also on ensuring that the sex scenes appeared authentic.

“Weirdly, probably the most revolutionary part was not the filming of it at all, just talking about it way in advance — settling nerves and making it a subject you wanted to explore and talk about,” Taylor said.

Not every member of his cast was sold on the idea.

“For some people it was almost like having a third wheel they didn’t need to have,” he said, and a handful of his younger actors who had not gone through traditional training asked, “‘Why is this woman making me breathe like a gorilla or move like a fish?’”

A long-standing criticism of over-rehearsing sex scenes has been that it will lead to a loss of chemistry. Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed “Last Tango in Paris,” once defended the film’s rape scene by arguing that he had wanted Schneider “to feel, not to act, the rage and humiliation.”

O’Brien argues that her guidelines help create magnetism between actors rather than squelching it. Her program aims to keep the actors “personally safe so they can be artistically free,” she said. “It doesn’t lock down or censor — it actually frees the actor up.”

Sara Wiseman, an Australian-based actress who took part in a workshop that O’Brien held in Sydney, agreed.

“We have to be vulnerable, we have to be sometimes violent, we have to be intimate with someone, so you want as much support on your side as possible,” said the actress, a New Zealand native known for her roles in the series “Rake” and “A Place to Call Home.”

Wiseman — who minutes earlier had been performing a tentative and tender kiss scene with another actress in the workshop — paused.

“Then you can bust out the creativity,” she said, “because you know your parameters.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/arts/movie-sex-scenes-safety-intimacy-coordinator.html" id="261c70a8-3696-3131-acb0-f70ba7b9471f">The New York Times</a>.

How to Make Sex Scenes Natural and Nonthreatening? Cue the 'Intimacy Coordinator'

SYDNEY — In the soft afternoon light, men and women huddle in groups, their images reflected in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Some kiss. Some fondle one another. Some touch fingertips, tension sizzling.

In “Douglas,” her new show named for her dog, which premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival last week, Gadsby discussed her autism diagnosis, which she received relatively recently, and the clarity it provided. While she found out about her autism before she put together “Nanette,” it was not until now that she felt ready to talk about it in front of an audience.

Her return — she will play more sold-out shows here, then begin a U.S. tour April 29 in San Francisco — follows the controversial success of “Nanette” in 2018. Beginning life onstage before going viral worldwide as a Netflix special, that show set off furious arguments about the nature of comedy. “I wasn’t expecting global stardom,” Gadsby said Friday. “I wasn’t expecting to finish and end up big in India. Now I have everyone watching me.”

In Melbourne, “Douglas” drew thousands of fans who agreed to lock away their phones in a special case during the show. “I’ve never heard such a huge crowd so silent. She’s the most courageous person,” said Theresa Bonasera, 52, from Melbourne.

“We’re very proud of her,” added another Melbourne local, Lindy Arc-Dekker, 59, a retired engineer. “It’s brave to make yourself so emotionally vulnerable. But I think the home crowd really took that and held her safe there.”

After the performance, I caught up with Gadsby, dressed in a cap, glasses and teddy-bear sweater, in the Arts Center Melbourne. Humble, self-deprecating and shy, she said that stand-up is “a really great way for me, as somebody who has lived an incredibly isolated experience, to connect with the world.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: In “Nanette” you said you were quitting comedy. But you’re back.

A: Quitting was always a theatrical device, and I’m delighted everyone took it so seriously. It was basically to defuse the obvious criticism: “That’s not comedy.” But that theatrical device, as I relived trauma night after night, felt really good to say it and mean it. I think I meant it and still mean it in the sense of the strictest definition of what comedy is — yeah, I’ve quit that.

Q: What was it like getting back onstage?

A:I thought I was risking a lot with “Nanette.” It was a lot more risky to not care about failure now that I’m at this level. That was my main driving principle writing “Douglas”: I don’t care if this fails. I’m going to take certain risks again.

Q: At times in “Douglas,” especially in a PowerPoint presentation where you unpack assumptions around fine art, you looked like you were having lots of fun.

A: The nature of “Nanette” meant I couldn’t enjoy that experience. I was exhausted and every night was trauma. “Douglas” is a fun show. And it will only get more fun as I weave the thoughts more tightly.

Q: How scary was it to talk about your autism diagnosis?

A: It was a lot of pressure. Everyone understands the coming-out story now: It is part of popular culture. But women with autism is a very niche experience. I can’t predict how people are going to respond.

Q: “Douglas” examines neurodiversity, portraying neurological differences, such as autism,not as “conditions” that need a cure but as human variations.

A: Autism is overwhelming. So people see the distress of it. But often in a lot of those distresses we’ve been dragged out of our little thought orgies, having a great time in our heads. Nobody sees that, and I don’t see that celebrated. It is different and it is not all sad. [People think] it’s a devastating existence. And it doesn’t have to be: It’s not autism that makes it difficult to live with autism. It’s the world we’ve created that is not geared in our favor.

Q: Why ban phones?

A: I believe strongly that in live performance you’re not passive — taking people’s access to their phone heightens their experience. It brings them back into the room. We’re all aware that there is an addiction going on. It is overwhelming having the world in your hand at all times.

Q: During “Douglas” at certain moments it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

A: In a room full of people, mood can spread like an infection. You can see that in broader culture too. I’m very interested in that because on the spectrum, we’re not as prone to be taken by [mass mood]. Our less intuitive way of experiencing the world stands outside that group thinking a little bit.

Q: You live in Los Angeles now. Will you stay?

A: I’m not going to stay in LA. People say you’ve got to give it two or three years and then you really love it. I don’t know if you really love it or you just become an LA person and I’m not sure I want to be that. It’s all industry, and that hustle makes me uneasy. Hollywood is making our culture, it is driving our stories, and I don’t see anything tackling homelessness and it is so in our face over there. So these people creating all our content are willfully blind to really vulnerable people. And I’ve been homeless. So I’m both sides in that town.

Q: “Ten Steps to Nanette” will be published later this year. How did you find the process of writing a memoir?

A: I’d been struggling, trying to write a book for a long time but could not. I could never reconcile this almost naive part of my world and life with this other part that is quite intelligent. But once I was diagnosed, I could fully understand that they could coexist and I could celebrate two parts of that world. The book has a lot of that: It’s tracking my life from extreme invisibility to extreme visibility.

Q: You have talked about a revolution in comedy. Tell me about that.

A: There does have to be a revolution of form in order to accommodate different voices. Because stand-up in the form it exists — stand-up punch line — that’s a form that was set up by men for men. It’s a competitive way of communicating, and that suits them. But there is a diversity of experiences that won’t fit into the format as it stands. I’m not sad if I kill comedy. I’m not sad.

This article originally appeared in <a id="78158925-b401-413c-a33d-079d89fa220b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/arts/television/hannah-gadsby-australia.html">The New York Times</a>.

Hannah Gadsby on autism and the risk of failing after 'Nanette'

MELBOURNE, Australia — In the smash hit show “Nanette” — which discussed homophobia, abuse and rape — Australian comic Hannah Gadsby declared she was quitting comedy. Now she’s back doing, yes, stand-up.

This article originally appeared in <a id="a457155f-e0bb-4d4c-bc3e-9a31ffe77186" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/arts/television/hannah-gadsby-australia.html">The New York Times</a>.

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Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Articles written by the author

How to Make Sex Scenes Natural and Nonthreatening? Cue the 'Intimacy Coordinator'

Hannah Gadsby on autism and the risk of failing after 'Nanette'

Hannah Gadsby on autism and the risk of failing after 'Nanette'