Course Breakdown

“Requirements: 30 credits by selecting 10 courses from across the curriculum that connect to a chosen topic. Note: No more than 3 of these courses can be from the same department. Note: No more than 4 of these courses may be at the 100/200 levels. Note: These courses may include independent study/direct study as deemed appropriate by you and your faculty advisor.”

DANCE

• Dance as an Art Form (Dance 100)

This course explored dance and movement practices across cultures. Taking this class expanded my understanding of movement practices and possibilities beyond a western approach. It also gave me a deeper understanding of movement practices that may be sacred to certain cultures, allowing me to be extremely mindful and specific when creating stories that don’t mirror what is familiar to me.

• Design for Directors and Choreographers (Dance 317)

This course gave me a comprehensive understanding of the technical elements involved in creating live production in a professional setting. I left this course feeling prepared to enter a collaborative theatre experience with an in-depth understanding of the role of each designer and how I can work with each one when it comes to depicting moments of fight and intimacy onstage.

SOCIOLOGY

• Intro to Sociology (SOC 100)

Sociology is, at its most basic level, the understanding of how humans interact with one another. Having a basic understanding of these principles and practices informs everything I do and allows me to make choices that feel natural to the human experience or, depending on the genre, go against the norm.

THEATRE

• Elements of Directing (THTR 305)

At its core, elements of directing is a class about communicating and collaborating. This class helped me hone in on my leadership qualities and learn how to enter a rehearsal room with confidence. It also gave me lots of great tools for speaking to actors and offering new ways to communicate a concept. This makes me better at everything I do in the intimacy world.

• Gender in Performance  (THTR 327 01)

This class explored the basics of Gender and Sexuality Studies, then compared it to contemporary theatre and its development since the beginning of time. Following the principles of Judith Butler’s Gender as Performance theory, this course identified gender as an act of performance, so the presentation of it onstage was always inherently intricate and important. This class taught me that gender holds weight and history, especially on stage. It was through my presentations in this class that I began to explore how gender can change a story. This class also sparked an interest in how intimacy looks different for different pairings of genders, including the involvement of a non-gender-conforming actor or character. Because gender is a spectrum and can show up in so many ways, I became aware of the flexibility an inclusive intimacy coordinator needs to have to make sure that no actors feel uncomfortable or misrepresented in depictions of intimacy onstage.

• Unarmed Stage Combat (THTR 314)

While there are many differences between intimacy and combat onstage, the basics are strikingly similar- there’s a vital need for safety, consistency and trust between all parties. Taking unarmed stage combat allowed me to return to the basics of my intimacy training and take the role of the participant. This really helped me understand the concepts I had been teaching in a much more tangible and practical way. Additionally, I received a pass with recommendation in Unarmed Stage Combat from the Society of American Fight Directors, something that has opened up many opportunities for me as I continue to pursue work in the combat and intimacy world.

COMMUNICATIONS

• Intro to Cinema Studies (COMM 131)

As I began to expand my interests in the intimacy world from stage to screen, I quickly learned that having a basic understanding of cinema terms and practices would be vital to my development as a pre-professional artist. Most of my early credits were coming from NYU film students, and this class gave me the knowledge necessary to walk on set with confidence to do my job and fit right into a team that I usually was meeting the day of the shoot.

ART

• Art Therapy: Principles & Practices (ART 370)

This course outlined the basics of art therapy treatment methods. I gained a detailed understanding of how the physical qualities of different art projects could have specific corresponding therapeutic benefits. As an intimacy coordinator, there will likely come a time where I encounter an artist feeling activated by material or heavy content; since I am not a mental health professional, this class helped me feel prepared on how to handle moments of activation with holistic short-term solutions that ensure a healthy and safe rehearsal environment, without taking on the role of a therapist.

SPEECH

• Psycholinguistics (SPCH 316)

Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and subconscious processes that allow humans to develop sound, create words, and arrange them into sentences. One of the primary points of study in this course was what can be revealed about one’s psyche based on different kinds of language-processing errors they may make. I’ve found that this knowledge has become incredibly helpful in script analysis of scenes I’m working on, especially scenes of intimate violence, to make sure the story being told is a theatrically accurate depiction of truth. 

WRITING

• Writing Seminar II (WRIT 102)

Taking a college-level writing course gave me a well-rounded understanding of what’s expected in collegiate papers and sharing research across many different mediums. Since intimacy direction is such a new and developing field, it was vital that I understood how to organize and share my ideas with the professional environments I hope to one day see my personal practices used in.