A well-known face of stage and screen, Jennifer Ward-Lealand is finding herself increasingly busy behind the camera in recent years. In 2018, Ward-Lealand began training as an intimacy coordinator under industry leader Ita O'Brien (Normal People, I May Destroy You, Master of None, Vikings), and became fully accredited in 2021.
Intimacy coordinators ensure the well-being of actors undertaking sex scenes or other intimate scenes for theatre, film and television, and it's a growing field in the post #metoo era.
On top of that, Ward-Lealand has been busy directing Grand Horizons, which is running an encore season 17-29 May at Auckland Theatre Company, and directed her first short film Disrupt, about the effects of methamphetamine on several generations of whānau.
Jennifer Ward-Lealand Te Atamira Photo: Supplied
Ward-Lealand compares intimacy coordination to having a stunt coordinator, where there is recognition people could get hurt, and efforts are made to do everything possible to make the situation safe: "You put some resource around that; you allow rehearsal time, you hire in a stunt coordinator, you've got the gear there to make sure people are protected.
"It's the same for a scene of intimacy, because people can get hurt physically or psychologically, so we're putting a professional process around those scenes, where we break them down into beats just as you would choreography - you're looking at the physical beats, the emotional beats.
"So you're putting together a scene that is repeatable, robust, the actors know what they're doing, and right at the core of everything, is consent."
Transparency, communication, consent, and organising ahead, were the keys to making difficult material safer, she said.
"Then everyone knows what they're doing before they step in front of the cameras, and the actors aren't left to kind of sort out something for themselves."
Scenes with intimate content are a legitimate part of actors work, she said, and preparation should be made so they can be handled professionally: "But 90 percent of the people I work with have had some, at the very least uncomfortable experience, at the very worst veering into sexual assault - so it's been a very necessary sea-change in our industry.
"Around 2015, before #metoo we were hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence that actors were finding a lot of these scenes problematic, either on set or in rehearsals or in auditions. So we started putting together some guidelines."
Working with actors to ensure they're prepared for depicting intimate scenes on stage and in front of the camera makes acting safer, intimacy coordinators say. Photo: 123rf
Have the changes in practice on set changed the stories we see presented on screen? Ward- Lealand thinks so, but said the way things have changed has positive for story-telling.
"I think it's made it better, because generally the experiences that the actors are creating is a lot deeper, it's more creative."
Working on intimacy coordination didn't mean stories couldn't be told depicting sexual violence or other difficult topics.
"The actors are looking through the lens of the character - what is the character going through - and the actor is not bringing their own personal sexuality or personal dynamic to the scene, they're bringing their acting skill - that's a huge difference, and it's a huge relief for actors."
Creating good practice is not just about how to approach sexual material in stories, but a wide range of the everyday intimate moments we might not normally share with strangers, she said.
"It could be anything where you're in the intimate personal space of someone, it could be bathing an aged person... it could be changing a baby's nappy, it could be giving birth."
The #Metoo campaign became viral in 2017 after a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano. Photo: duncan c/Flickr
New Zealand's theatre, film and television community have been very quick to recognise the need for intimacy coordination, Ward-Lealand said, and she has encountered an almost universal acceptance of the need for it.
"The industry is very aware that intimacy coordinators exist, and on the whole have just been amazing at making that available for the actors.
"It makes a lot of other departments work well: You can be the go-between between the actor and wardrobe, the actor and make-up, the actor and production, so the actor isn't having to navigate these things by themselves. For many productions it's a great relief to have somebody in that role.
In the last three years served as an intimacy coordinator for more than 50 productions.
"Some directors are very prescriptive in what they want - and that's fabulous, and some are like: 'that's up to you and whatever the actors are comfortable with'.
"You have to be flexible and make sure you are serving the director's vision and then making sure that it's done with all the professionalism possible."
