CONTENT WARNING: This blog post contains mentions of sexual violence and uses language and examples that could be upsetting. Please read with discretion. 

Potentiality Statement: My name is Audrey Gatewood, and I am a senior-year Social Work student at UMBC, and field intern at the Women’s Center. In this blog I am writing about the relatively new position of an Intimacy Coordinator on film and theater sets. I describe the need for intimacy coordinators, what they do, how they are being used, and the larger cultural implications of creating this new role. I have an educational background in theater and film production and work as a photographer. Additionally much of my academic focus has been around sexual and gender based violence. The implementation of intimacy coordinators on sets is an exciting move towards safer and more equitable work environments for actors. Please note, I am not an intimacy coordinator, and I have never worked with or interviewed one. I am writing from research I have done, and general observations and understandings around production environments and rape culture. I will be talking about actors in film and theater interchangeably, though there are nuanced differences in their work circumstances, history and experiences. 

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones during the filming of Normal People.Photography Enda Bowe/BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu . Image shows a bedroom film set, with two white people laying together in a white bed, undressed covered by sheets. They are surrounded by camera and lighting equipment, and two film crew members directing the scene. 

In the 1972 drama, Last Tango in Paris, actress Maria Schnieder was 19 years old and new to the film industry. So, when she arrived on set and was told, unbeknownst to her previously, that she would need to shoot a graphic scene where her character would be raped, she felt she couldn’t say no. Schnieder was working with esteemed Hollywood star Marlon Brando, 48 years old at the time, and director Bernardo Bertolucci, 31. She spoke on the incident in an interview in 2007: 

“ They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry. I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that. Marlon said to me: ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie’, but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take” https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/11/26/story-behind-filmmaker-bernardo-bertoluccis-last-public-controversy/ 

Actors may find themselves in challenging, harmful or unethical work situations where their boundaries are blurred. Not many other jobs pose the risks associated with having to simulate scenarios that could involve violence, emotional turmoil, physically demanding stunts, nudity and vulnerable intimacy. This can be paired with power dynamics, the high stakes of a professional acting role, and the expectation that the actor should be willing to do anything for the character, like we see in the case of Maria Schnieder.   

That being said, if you ask someone if there should be a stunt coordinator on an action movie, they might say “of course.” What about someone to choreograph a fight? Of course, you wouldn’t just tell an actor to swing swords at each other, or jump out of a building, would you? 

While stunts and fights are understood as explicitly risky, scenes which involve intimacy generate risk as well. If done unethically, sex and nudity in productions can be traumatic experiences for actors, who may be expected to just ‘know how’ to portray intimacy, be comfortable being exposed, and endure the blurring of their personal boundaries versus the wants of the director. Intimacy coordinator Clare Worden says, “It ranges from the just really awkward and uncomfortable, to finding tongues in your mouth when you don’t expect a tongue in your mouth, and it all goes all the way up the scale to, you know, full-on sexual assault.” Intimacy coordinator and the associate director and co-founder of Intimacy Directors International (IDI) Alicia Rodis says, “ “[…] violent scenes we could choreograph, we could talk about. But when we got to intimate scenes, no one really knew how to approach it, or really have a common language about [them].” Stunt coordinators and combat choreographers have been staples on large productions for decades. And though intimacy has been featured in film and theater for just as long, it’s only recently that a new position has been established: An intimacy coordinator.  

An intimacy coordinator brings professional skills and ethical perspectives to choreographing intimate scenes in theater and film. Their job is to work with the director and actors to map out the specifics of a sex scene, so that boundries are clear and informed consent can be granted. The actors will rehearse the scenes with the coordinator present, creating a safe technical foundation for the actors to work from. Special protective cups, modesty garments, tapes, and other tools are included, as well.  “My motto is no surprises- we should have a very clear plan before we get to set about what’s going to happen,” says intimacy coordinator Lindsay Somers. “[We discuss] the degree of nudity, wardrobe, and choreography for the scene, and the performers personal boundaries are included in the choreography. They aren’t puppets or chess pieces to be moved around.”  

A major benefit of having an intimacy coordinator on set is that they can act as liaisons and advocates for actors’ boundaries. They are informed about actors’ contracts, workplace safety rights, specifics of the script, and consensually decide on choreography, making them theoretically unwavering to boundary-violating suggestions. Consider Maria Schnieder’s experience, and how it could have been different had there been an intimacy coordinator on set to help her say no in the face of two powerful, older men. 

More and more productions are employing intimacy coordinators, perhaps in response to highly publicized social movements and controversies. For example, Hollywood had a reckoning in 2017 through the ‘#MeToo’ movement, branching off of earlier work done by activist Tarana Burke, in which people who had experienced sexual violence shared a solidarity hashtag, ‘metoo,’ on social media. Hollywood actors joined the movement, and in the process exposed predatory figures in the industry, most notably producer Harvey Weinstien, who had more then 80 allegations of sexual assault and rape against him. This cultural moment set off a public discourse about sexual assault on sets, and perhaps created an environment where more actors felt empowered coming forward.

Infographic from Consent Wizardry

Emilia Clarke, famous for playing Daenerys Targarye on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is one in a growing list of actors who have publicly stated they felt pressured or disregarded during filming on intimate scenes on set. Clarke said she found herself vulnerable to the demands of the directors, noting that she initially acquiesced to such explicit on-screen nudity because she was 23 years old and fresh out of school, working on her first major film set. “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, sheet stays up,’ and they’re like, ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.’ And I’m like, ‘F*** you.'” 

Perhaps as a response to the negative backlash HBO and GOT faced from Clarke’s comments, and the overall shift from #MeToo, not only HBO but Amazon Prime and Netflix now require intimacy coordinators on their sets, and many other recent productions have employed them as well. Bridgerton, Euphoria, and I Will Destroy You are just a few of many recent productions that utilize intimacy coordinators. 

In 2019, The biggest U.S. actors union adopted new guidelines for nudity and simulated sex scenes. It seems the relatively new implementation of the intimacy coordinator is here to stay on film and theater sets. 

Intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodis on set. CBS NEWS. Three people film a scene outdoors;  a Black woman with long locs lays on the ground on a tarp like material with a white, shirtless man kneeling above her. An additional person, Alicia Rodis, squats to the right of the actors, speaking and gesturing towards the woman. Camera equipment is visible in the background

As Alicia Rodis points out, violence and stunts have been comfortably choreographed on sets for years, but productions have been unequip for forthright and equitable conversations about sex, intimacy and nudity. Culturally, we are adjusted to displays of violence as entertainment, but view intimacy both as so sensitive that we struggle to be transparent about it, and yet entertaining enough to feature in tons of media. Without a clarified professional or process on set, who is guiding the intimacy? 

I would argue it’s our broad, cultural understandings around sex running the show, which is a potentially dangerous thing. Unfortunately, our larger culture around sex is often not healthy or transparent, rather it dictated by what scholars call rape culture. The term rape culture refers to a setting in which the normalization of rape, assault, and coercion are intertwined with common attitudes about gender and sex in general. This can show up in more subtle, daily occurrences, such as how the news covers instances of sexual violence using minimizing language, and the aligned social commentary that follows. For example, the following is a headline from The Sun, a Brisish tabloid news paper, covering the rape and murder of 20 year old India Chipchase by Edward Tenniswood : “Woman ‘drank six Jagerbombs in ten minutes on the night she was raped and murdered.” The staff’s attempt to pin blame on Chipchase for drinking creates a direct, common scapegoat: she was asking for it. 

  Rape culture also shows up, for example, in how a friend may talk about a date they went on, where they saw how their date was dressed as a form of consent. Studies show that college students frequently do not have a consistent definition of consent, and displayed varrying attitudes and experiences around sex based on gendered expectations. Rape culture can appear as victim blaming, sexual objectification, ‘slut-shaming,’ trivializing sexual harm, and more- all of which is influenced by media that doesn’t approach intimacy with a safe, consent-based framework. 

Even as there is an increase in the prevalence of intimacy coordinators, there is still a skepticism attached to the role. Intimacy coordinator Elle McAlpine says, “When we go on set, we’re sometimes called the fun police. It’s not about that; it’s about educating people about this work.” This displays both a misunderstanding of the coordinators job, and a telling indicator of rape culture. What does it mean that when someone being deliberate, negotiating and enforcing boundaries, and being explicit and intentional about intimacy, is considered ruining the ‘fun’? 

It seems that the use of intimacy coordinators is only going to increase from here on, which could indicate a positive collective shift in how we are viewing intimacy and consent. The amplification of intimacy coordinators as critical crew members will hopefully continue to bring conversations around consent and autonomy to the collective forefront, and make sets a safer place for actors to work. 

Additional Reference

Baldwin-White, A. (2021). “When a Girl Says No, You Should Be Persistent Until She Says Yes”: College Students and Their Beliefs About Consent. Journal of Interpersonal Violence

CBS Interactive.  How intimacy coordinators are changing the way intimate encounters are filmed. CBS News. 

Hilton, E. (2021, May 13). Let’s talk about simulated sex: Intimacy coordinators two years on. The Hollywood Reporter. 

Izadi, E. (2018, November 26). The story behind filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci’s last public controversy. The Washington Post.

Lewis, S. (2019, November 21). Emilia Clarke says she’s been pressured to film nude scenes after “Game of thrones”. CBS News.

SAG, Standards protocols for the use of intimacy coordinators .

The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) Initiative is pleased to announce a Request for Proposals for the 2023 OER Grant Program. For 2023, M.O.S.T. is seeking proposals for two grant programs.  

Faculty OER Grant Program

The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative is seeking proposals for its Faculty OER Grant Program, which supports faculty efforts to increase access, affordability, and achievement for students at Maryland's postsecondary institutions through the incorporation of open educational resources (OER) into teaching practice.

Available grants in 2023:

• Adopt/Adapt OER ($1,000 grant + Participation in the Lumen Circles Community of Practice)

• Create/Revise and Publish OER ($2,000 grant + Participation in the Rebus Textbook Success Program)

• OLI STEM Courseware Grants ($5,000 grant + Participation in the NSF-Funded Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI) STEM Courseware Project) NOTE: Available for 2-year colleges only

Institutional OER Grant Program

The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative is seeking proposals for the Institutional OER Grant Program, which supports strategic institutional efforts to increase access, affordability, and achievement for students at Maryland's postsecondary institutions through more systemic incorporation of open educational resources (OER) into teaching practice.

For 2023, selected institutions will be awarded $20,000 grants to support significant advances in OER adoption, scaling, and sustainability in support of student success. In addition, grantees will receive strategic planning and implementation support for their projects from M.O.S.T. in the form of consultations and regular monthly check-ins.

All proposals must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 1, 2023

All institutional grants and faculty grants awarded to UMBC must be routed to the Office of Sponsored Programs prior to submission. Contact your unit's business manager or proposal development staff to discuss your application.

Informational Webinar

Join M.O.S.T. on Monday, January 23, 2023 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET for an Informational Webinar to learn more about the grant requirements and expectations for successful grants. We will also answer any questions about the grants at that time. Register for the Informational Webinar.

If you have any questions, reach out to us at most@usmd.edu.

Chengpeng Chen, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UMBC

Bringing a new drug to market costs billions of dollars and can take over a decade. These high monetary and time investments are both strong contributors to today’s skyrocketing health care costs and significant obstacles to delivering new therapies to patients. One big reason behind these barriers is the lab models researchers use to develop drugs in the first place.

Preclinical trials, or studies that test a drug’s efficacy and toxicity before it enters clinical trials in people, are mainly conducted on cell cultures and animals. Both are limited by their poor ability to mimic the conditions of the human body. Cell cultures in a petri dish are unable to replicate every aspect of tissue function, such as how cells interact in the body or the dynamics of living organs. And animals are not humans – even small genetic differences between species can be amplified to major physiological differences.

Fewer than 8% of successful animal studies for cancer therapies make it to human clinical trials. Because animal models often fail to predict drug effects in human clinical trials, these late-stage failures can significantly drive up both costs and patient health risks.

To address this translation problem, researchers have been developing a promising model that can more closely mimic the human body – organ-on-a-chip.

As an analytical chemist, I have been working to develop organ and tissue models that avoid the simplicity of common cell cultures and the discrepancies of animal models. I believe that, with further development, organs-on-chips can help researchers study diseases and test drugs in conditions that are closer to real life.

What are organs-on-chips?

In the late 1990s, researchers figured out a way to layer elastic polymers to control and examine fluids at a microscopic level. This launched the field of microfluidics, which for the biomedical sciences involves the use of devices that can mimic the dynamic flow of fluids in the body, such as blood.

Advances in microfluidics have provided researchers a platform to culture cells that function more closely to how they would in the human body, specifically with organs-on-chips. The “chip” refers to the microfluidic device that encases the cells. They’re commonly made using the same technology as computer chips.

Not only do organs-on-chips mimic blood flow in the body, these platforms have microchambers that allow researchers to integrate multiple types of cells to mimic the diverse range of cell types normally present in an organ. The fluid flow connects these multiple cell types, allowing researchers to study how they interact with each other.

This technology can overcome the limitations of both static cell cultures and animal studies in several ways. First, the presence of fluid flowing in the model allows it to mimic both what a cell experiences in the body, such as how it receives nutrients and removes wastes, and how a drug will move in the blood and interact with multiple types of cells. The ability to control fluid flow also enables researchers to fine-tune the optimal dosing for a particular drug.

The lung-on-a-chip model, for instance, is able to integrate both the mechanical and physical qualities of a living human lung. It’s able to mimic the dilation and contraction, or inhalation and exhalation, of the lung and simulate the interface between the lung and air. The ability to replicate these qualities allows researchers to better study lung impairment across different factors.

Bringing organs-on-chips to scale

While organ-on-a-chip pushes the boundaries of early-stage pharmaceutical research, the technology has not been widely integrated into drug development pipelines. I believe that a core obstacle for wide adoption of such chips is its high complexity and low practicality.

Current organ-on-a-chip models are difficult for the average scientist to use. Also, because most models are single-use and allow only one input, which limits what researchers can study at a given time, they are both expensive and time- and labor-intensive to implement. The high investments required to use these models might dampen enthusiasm to adopt them. After all, researchers often use the least complex models available for preclinical studies to reduce time and cost.

Lowering the technical bar to make and use organs-on-chips is critical to allowing the entire research community to take full advantage of their benefits. But this does not necessarily require simplifying the models. My lab, for example, has designed various “plug-and-play” tissue chips that are standardized and modular, allowing researchers to readily assemble premade parts to run their experiments.

The advent of 3D printing has also significantly facilitated the development of organ-on-a-chip, allowing researchers to directly manufacture entire tissue and organ models on chips. 3D printing is ideal for fast prototyping and design-sharing between users and also makes it easy for mass production of standardized materials.

I believe that organs-on-chips hold the potential to enable breakthroughs in drug discovery and allow researchers to better understand how organs function in health and disease. Increasing this technology’s accessibility could help take the model out of development in the lab and let it make its mark on the biomedical industry.

Chengpeng Chen, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Happy New Year! 

Wishing you the best for Winter Session 2023, and for the year ahead! 

Interact Program Spring 2023

i3b (Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging) is re-introducing their Interact Dialogues Program, and invites interested students to apply for the Spring 2023 session! 

The Interact Dialogues Program is a 5-week experience designed for students to learn and practice skills to become inclusive leaders and engaged community members. Interact is a space where students can develop leadership skills, and cultivate a deep sense of belonging to the UMBC campus and community. 

You can register for the program here. If you have questions about the program or would like more information, a flier is attached to this message, or you can email interact@umbc.edu. 

Lunar New Year Event

The Center for Global Engagement's International Students and Scholars team is planning an event across campus to celebrate Lunar New Year! More information about this activity will be available in the coming weeks - keep an eye out for it at the start of the Spring 2023 semester!

Spring 2023 Advising

If you still need advising and registration clearance for Spring 2023, it's not too late! Fill out this Google form to get started. 

Upcoming Dates and Deadlines

• Friday, Jan 13: Last day to withdraw from individual Winter 2023 courses
• Monday, Jan 16: UMBC Closed (Martin Luther King, Jr., Day)
• Thursday, Jan 26: Last day for full Winter 2023 withdrawal
• Monday, Jan 30: Spring 2023 first day of classes

[thumbnail image description: a photograph overlooking the Nanzen-ji Sanmon Gate in Kyoto. Its roof and upper level are visible, framed by trees and other foliage, near sunset on a clear winter day. Hazy mountains can be seen along the horizon in the distance.]