Ita O’Brien, UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, joins us at Taking The Stage

We are incredibly excited to have Ita O’Brien, the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator and Movement Director for film, television, and theatre, with us at our Taking The Stage festival on Saturday 19th October at Milton Keynes Gallery.

She joins us at 4pm in the Event Space to give us a greater insight into her role and how having an Intimacy Co-ordinator has become more important on set and stage over the last few years. A question and answer session will follow at 4.45pm.

Ita has worked on some very well-known TV shows and films that we’re sure you will have heard of and enjoyed watching, including ‘Sex Education’ for Netflix, ‘Normal People’, ‘I May Destroy You’ and ‘Gentleman Jack’ for BBC, ‘It’s A Sin’ for Channel 4, and more recently ‘We Live In Time’ starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh.

Her career began in theatre having trained as a dancer at The Royal Academy of Dance and at Bush Davies. She later moved into musical theatre and performed in West End and touring productions, including ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ and ‘The Rocky Horror Show’.

Following her time on stage, Ita gained a diploma in acting from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and an MA in Movement Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, before teaching courses such as MA Movement: Directing and Teaching, MA Applied Theatre Practice, and BA (Hons) Acting in a range of theatre schools and high-profile institutions, including Mountview, LAMDA and Drama Centre. 

In 2009, while working as a movement teacher and director, she produced her own play, ‘April Fool’, which looked at the dynamics of abuse in society. Here she began to explore different processes and practices that would help her and fellow actors remain safe when working with challenging subjects and performing intimate content.

It was during this experience that these processes became part of Ita’s ‘Intimacy on Set Guidelines’ which help her to work with the cast and director to carefully and comfortably choreograph intimate scenes ensuring everyone involved is safe and happy and the director’s vision is achieved.

These Guidelines were one of the first to be developed in the UK and Ita having shared them with Equity (the performing arts and entertainment trade union) in 2017, they have now become a standard practice throughout the TV, film and theatre industry.

In addition to her work, she founded Intimacy on Set - an organisation that trains intimacy coordinators from all around the world, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US, on the ‘Intimacy on Set Guidelines’.

We don’t want to give too much detail into Ita’s fascinating role and extensive work, as we don’t want to spoil her talk for when you come and join us in person.

Ita has a wealth of experience to share with us all and as you can see already, this will be a fascinating topic to hear about and discuss.

Please do join us and Ita O’Brien. You can find out more and book tickets here.

Taking The Stage, is a four-day festival that empowers women in the arts - staged at MK Gallery from 16^th - 19^th October and funded by Arts Council England.

With an inspiring lineup of new plays from playwrights, including Carly Halse, Lisa Stenhouse, and Suzette Coon, talks with Lesley Gannon from Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and Ita O’Brien, plus discussions with panellists, including Winsome Pinnock, Jenny Sealey and Lynda Rooke, this is one festival you won’t want to miss. Panels will be BSL interpreted, and plays will be captioned. For full festival information click here.