"By intimacy, we mean all those moments where you're vulnerable," said Alice Aleksandridi, an intimacy coordinator who trained in the U.S. and France. That can include simulated sex, but also medical or hospital scenes, racism or scenes involving minors.

"Many professions emerge from situations where something went wrong and ask how to make sure it doesn't happen again," she explained, adding that intimacy coordination is one of them.

Aleksandridi works as a choreographer and liaison between performers and productions, helping actors feel safe while ensuring directors can safely achieve the intended scene and message. She said the profession combines her backgrounds in law and choreography.

The point of their work, she continued, is not to impose rules but find a way to stage difficult material safely. If an intimate scene is genuinely necessary, the next question is how to handle it appropriately.

"One of the basic questions an intimacy coordinator asks as a rule when reading a script is, 'Could this be done another way? Do we actually need this nudity to get the message across?'" she explained. "If the answer is yes, we move forward and figure out how to do it."

Intimate onstage

That question is relevant to "Moonlight" ("Kuuvalgel"), a Haapsalu summer production based on Terrence McNally's 1987 play "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune." Kaia Skoblov and Karl-Markus Pihlakas play the two leads in a story about intimacy, trust and fear of letting another person get close.

Pihlakas said the material immediately appealed to the cast and director Helen Rekkor because of its focus on intimacy and closeness. The production also uses headphones to create an even more intimate experience for the audience.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kaia Skoblov (@kaiasko)

 Skoblov noted she would not have accepted the role if she had been uncomfortable performing intimate scenes.

"I read the material and felt this was a story worth telling, because these themes really spoke to me," she said.

Pihlakas said the production also reflects a broader change in how intimacy is viewed onstage.

"Society has gotten more open about these topics," he said, adding that the increased interest in seeing intimacy onstage and on screen is in some ways a reflection of that. "'We're freer and we want to see that [freedom] onstage too!'"

'You bring it with you on set'

While the two actors confirmed they were able to handle the intimate scenes themselves and did not need an intimacy coordinator for this production, Aleksandridi said the need for such a coordinator can arise even when performers and directors know each other well.

She recalled examples from her training where actors struggled with violent or intimate scenes due to various personal circumstances or experiences.

In one case, two actors had played a couple in several films already, and the male actor denied needing an intimacy coordinator because they had worked together for so long already.

"But he didn't know the female actor had been raped two weeks before filming began," the Estonian intimacy coordinator said.

"At the end of the day, an actor is first and foremost a person," she stressed. "Whatever's going on in your everyday life, you bring it with you on set."

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!