Out of Character: Ryan McKinny, Lauren Snouffer, and Sara Brodie
The idea of intimacy coordination for movies and TV is familiar by now. Less known is that the practice is fast becoming standard in the opera industry. The stars and revival director of Breaking the Waves share why it’s important.
What is challenging about directing Breaking the Waves?
Sara Brodie: It is such a psychologically complex piece, which I think makes it challenging but incredibly interesting to unpack: what drives these characters to do what they are doing? But because of the story and where it takes us—sort of down this very strange rabbit hole—the other challenge for me is to make sure, from my perspective, that the pastoral care of everyone involved is held. There’s a lot of challenging material here in terms of Bess’s story and what she ends up doing for love.
Tell us about Jan and Bess.
Ryan McKinny: Well, Jan’s an offshore oil rig worker, so very blue-collar guy and—I think, in comparison to the world that she lives in—a very earthy sort of guy. He is very much in love with his wife, and an intensely sexual person also, which is a big part of the story of the two of them. I think he’s really, really, truly devastated in the end. But he tries to figure out how to help his wife have more of a life while he thinks he’s going to be bedridden forever. It’s deeply tragic.
Lauren Snouffer: Bess is a really complicated character. In the film, she is portrayed as being extremely impressionable, possibly having kind of a low IQ, and then also growing up in this incredibly rigorous religious community. For the opera’s purposes, we’re envisioning her as a perfectly mentally capable person who grew up with a very strict structure around her and therefore wasn’t able to develop in a natural way mentally. So the way that she deals with a huge, unexpected conflict, and grief, is unusual. She really believes that she’s a part of healing someone else by doing the things that she does.
Sara Brodie: With this opera, it’s a case of trying to really find the internal logic for the two main characters of Jan and Bess. One touchstone we have always had is that everyone is trying to do good. The church elders are trying to do good. Bess’s mother who rejects her is trying to do good. You know, everyone’s trying to save the situation in the best way they know how to.
How has the industry changed?
LS: What we do can be very physical, and to tell a compelling story on stage, you have to have chemistry with your stage partners. If you don’t have chemistry, you have to find it. Especially with a piece like this, there’s a lot of raw material. I think as audiences, we really want to be a part of something that feels honest and not sugarcoated. And intimacy and sex are all a part of our experience as humans. If you do Romeo and Juliet and you just kind of float on the surface of that, it doesn’t tell the full story, you know?
When casting happens, you get cast with people who are the best singers for their parts and who are also good actors, but they might not be people that you know well or have an instant comfort with. Just because we’re all different people, and we all come from different places. So I think it really helps us do our jobs better when there’s a third person in the room who’s helping us all get on the same page—just making sure that it’s not up to one person’s whim what happens on stage. I know a lot of singers who have stories about, oh, we were doing the finale, and this tenor put his tongue in my mouth. These kinds of stories—they’re a common part of our experience, unfortunately. Intimacy coordination deters that kind of behavior.
RM: I’m a person who always wanted to make sure—even before I understood language around it— that my scene partners were comfortable. And also, that I was comfortable with whatever we were doing, even if it’s simpler stuff, like you’re doing The Marriage of Figaro and Figaro and Susanna are hugging a lot, and maybe they kiss a few times. But it was a very awkward thing to have to have that discussion, deciding with your scene partner what’s okay and working that out on the side, which is often what happened. I watched lots of other people who I worked with be inappropriate around that multiple times over the years. And they would get talked to, but it was always kind of after the fact.
SB: I’ve been choreographing intimate scenes for a long time. There’s more language around it now, because people are sharing techniques that they’ve found really effective and useful. There’s more awareness in general about trauma, and trauma held in the body, within our world and communities and the health profession. I think we’re getting better at it.
Are you looking forward to bringing Breaking the Waves to Houston audiences?
RM: I’m really excited about it. I love Missy’s music. I think she writes really well for singers, although it’s very challenging. It’s a really intense acting role, and I love that kind of challenge. It’s great that HGO does these kinds of pieces that push the boundaries a little bit.
LS: Absolutely. I think audiences will love it. It’s a really cool piece to listen to. The music is epic. And the harmonies that Missy writes into it—they’re very modern, but not in the way that people think of modern music, like it’s hard to listen to. You can feel it deeply. And you can really feel, in a contemporary way, what all of the musical language is trying to convey.
SB: I’m always a supporter of doing new work, and that we need to look at stories that come from our world and our times. It’s all about probing humanity, and who we are, and what makes us tick, and what makes another person tick, and being able to look into that, delve into it, and relate it to ourselves. Or at least start to think about, oh my goodness, how could that happen to somebody?
Sara Brodie on the five Cs.
Sara Brodie has extensive experience and training in intimacy direction, including for this same production when it was presented by Detroit Opera last spring.
“Breaking the Waves was probably my first job with the official title of intimacy director,” Brodie shares. “But prior to that, because I worked as a choreographer and director, I’d been brought in to productions to do movement direction and, as part of that, had done the intimate scenes.”
Here in Houston, Samantha Kaufman will serve as intimacy director for Breaking the Waves. But as the opera’s revival and movement director, Brodie makes it her business to ensure artists’ needs are being met. In fact, she started conversations with both Lauren Snouffer and Ryan McKinny long before they arrived in Houston, beginning with the characters and their motivations.
“And then from that, you start having the more intimate conversation about comfort levels and boundaries,” she explains. “It’s hugely important to make sure that no one walks away from their work environment feeling traumatized by what they’re doing.”
We asked Brodie to break down what is commonly referred to in the business as “the five Cs” for intimacy direction:
Context
“An intimacy director will go through a script and pinpoint every possible moment for intimacy where they need to be involved. What’s driving it? What is the context for the people involved?”
Communication
“It’s all about trying to have these conversations, about the director’s vision in relation to the material, and then, the performer being part of that conversation. I think that’s the biggest thing. In the past, that conversation didn’t necessarily happen, or it happened on the first day of rehearsal. And now that’s shifting, which is a great thing.”
Consent
“What the performer agrees or doesn’t agree to. And if they don’t agree, then what’s the alternative? It’s all about looking for different pathways to tell the story.”
Choreography
“When it comes down to creating the scene, we know what’s driving these people, but behind that, the job is like choreographing. It’s exactly the same. You’ve got the same steps in place.”
Closure
“At the end, we all kind of sign off on it. Quite often, that’s just a physical thing, like a fist pump or a high five to go, ‘and that’s the end of the scene,’ and put a lid on it. And then go home to your dog and partner.”
