Michael Phillips: Performing a kiss or a caress can be taught. A Chicago intimacy coordinator discusses the fine art of making an actor’s job less weird

CHICAGO — “OK. We’re going to go through kissing right now.”

That isn’t quite what it sounds like. With nine of his Columbia College Chicago undergraduate students, in Room 226 of the 916 Wabash Building, Greg Geffrard crisscrosses the classroom studio. His mission: Teach the next generation of theater and film workers what it takes to guide actors in moments of intimacy you actually believe. And do it so that future performers can deliver these tricky, often nakedly revealing moments of storytelling, or violence, or emotional devastation, without suffering undue post-performance fallout.

The class: Intimacy Choreography/Directing. Columbia College is building on the newly popular stage and screen intimacy field with a 16-credit, graduate-level certificate program new this fall called, simply, Intimacy for Stage and Screen. It’s the first of its kind, according to school officials, in any accredited American college or university.

Geffrard’s class this particular day focuses on a two-person, four-line script. It goes like this:

That was fun

Thanks