Intimacy Choreography
The Body as Palimpsest: Developing Modalities for Theatrical Intimacy
The *Annotated* Taming: Or, Out of the Saddle, Into the Dirt, Hampshire Shakespeare Company
“Our bodies are maps.” “Written on the body.” “The graffiti of the body.” Our language reveals our understanding of our bodies as palimpsests, as texts covered and erased time and again, retaining traces of experience, of touch. We have what I call the Exquisite Human Polarity: an overwhelming desire to be seen coupled with the terror of being truly known. We long for someone to come along and uncover our partially erased texts, to read us deeply and understand our intertextuality. But at the edge of this longing is the fear: what will our writing reveal?
People become theater artists for various reasons, and it took me a long while to define what it was that had always drawn me here. I was finally able to distill it down to an interest in the depth and complexity of what it means to be human, and a desire to use the theater to rehearse, literally and metaphorically, for the significant moments in our lives, both the challenges and the pleasures. Thus, it was a natural extension of my own work as a director to unearth, explore, break apart, put back together, and then codify the mysteries of human relationships, and to investigate the psychological and physiological manifestations of intimacy within those relationships.
Questions I began to ask myself included:
How does the way two people touch each other change over time, from first intimacy through years of knowledge and experience? If actors are playing two people who have been married for fifty years, what kind of work is necessary to make their physical relationship believable? And, what’s in a name? How does the way we say a person’s name change over time, with our deepening love and desire? And, what secrets and memories do our bodies hold, and what are we aware of in other people’s bodies? When two people come together, how does this shared physical knowledge affect their lexicon of gesture? Out of these questions, and over the years, I have developed exercises to fit the needs of specific projects. I have also recently rooted this work in my expanding knowledge of the psycho-physical acting techniques of Michael Chekhov.
Set in the Living Room of a Small Town American Play, Colby College
I teach workshops, function as intimacy choreographer and consultant on various projects (including Asolo Repertory Theatre’s production of The Cake and Portland Stage’s Refuge Malja), and let these ideas deeply infuse my own directorial processes.
The longer I am on the planet, and the more training I receive in a variety of different disciplines, the more I am able to refine my understanding of intimacy and layer in new exercises and discoveries. Each production becomes a lab in which to investigate the origins and expressions of human desire.
Learn more: Toby Vera Bercovici '11G finds a better way to bring intimacy to the stage
Working with Toby on Intimacy…
“As an actor with a 40-year professional career, I am far too leery of modern techniques and exercises. Sometimes I resist, sometimes I grit my teeth. In approaching my first experience with Intimacy work, working on Asolo Rep’s production of The Cake, I determined to adopt the latter as my methodology. In Toby Bercovici’s kind and capable hands, my scene partner and I were led through a series of exercises, in privacy, to heighten and deepen our characters’ quiet familiarity. Those exercises not only facilitated our work in rehearsal creating a convenient bond between us but in my own case, continued to inform my work in preparation and performance for the play. The intimacy work we (Toby, my partner and I) did was unexpectedly valuable and in the final analysis, essential to our ability to function realistically as a couple. Beyond building a bond of comfort and respect for the actual intimate contact, the work also had a significant impact on our general and relationship work as well.”
The Cake, Asolo Repertory Theatre, directed by Lavina Jadhwani
The Cake, Asolo Repertory Theatre, directed by Lavina Jadhwani
“Working with Toby on expanding our intimacy vocabulary and chemistry played such an integral role in how I approached my relationships in Asolo Rep’s productions of The Crucible and The Cake. Her teachings added a level of depth and history to the characters that I don’t think would have been found, had we not had the pleasure of working with her.”
“Toby Bercovici’s Intimacy Workshop was invaluable to our Department. It provided us a concrete, useful protocol for rehearsing and staging intimate scenes. It also was inspirational because it reminded us that thoughtfully and safely staged intimacy leads to richer and more truthful performances, and to more nuanced and textured art. Toby is a wonderful facilitator with a great feel for the room.”
“Toby Bercovici is a masterful facilitator. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop she did with our department. It was organized extremely well and executed in an efficient but deeply caring manner. I left the workshop with what I feel are immensely useful tools for dealing with aspects of that intimacy whether it be a theater classroom or in theater production. In addition, I was made keenly aware of the importance of collaborating with someone as skilled as Toby when doing this kind of work.”
The Water Station, University of Massachusetts Amherst, directed by Vishnupad Barve