If Your Community Theatre Can’t Afford an Intimacy Coordinator, Are You Ready to Do This Show?

by Chris Peterson

“If your community theatre can’t afford an intimacy coordinator for the entire rehearsal process and run, should they even be doing shows like Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, American Idiot, Jagged Little Pill?”

People usually ask it like there is a right answer, as you can just circle yes or no and move on with your season planning meeting. The problem is, the reality is messier than that, and pretending it isn’t is exactly how people get hurt.

Let’s start here: intimacy coordination matters. It matters a lot. These shows ask actors to put their bodies, their boundaries, and often their own lived trauma on the line. This isn’t just about simulated sex. It’s often about power, consent, addiction, self-harm, queerness, sexual violence, grief, and the emotional weight that comes with telling those stories night after night. And in community theatre, many of the people being asked to do that are volunteers, walking into rehearsal rooms that don’t always know how to hold that kind of work.

We know better now. Or at least we say we do.

At the same time, community theatre isn’t Broadway. It isn’t a LORT house. It’s often people trying to keep the lights on, patch the roof, pay the music director something resembling fair, and still program work that feels relevant instead of dusty. Most organizations are stretching every dollar until it screams. So when someone says, “If you can’t afford an intimacy coordinator, don’t do the show,” what they’re really saying, whether they mean to or not, is that a whole swath of modern, challenging work should simply be off-limits to community theatre altogether.

And I don’t think that’s the answer either.

What frustrates me most is how black & white this conversation has become. Either you meet the gold standard perfectly, or you’re reckless. Either you do it “right,” or you shouldn’t do it at all. That kind of thinking might feel morally tidy online, but it doesn’t actually solve anything in rehearsal rooms.

And before anyone jumps in with “Well, at least they hired someone,” let me share an anonymous story that landed in my inbox recently. It’s the kind of example that should make everyone sit up a little straighter.

This production did hire an intimacy coordinator. Technically. On paper. They brought them in for one day, for an hour, a week before opening. By that point, everything was already set: blocking, physical habits, emotional dynamics, all of it baked in. Because no real framework had been established earlier, boundaries were never actually discussed in any meaningful way.

According to the actor, the consent conversation went something like, “Do you care?” “No, do you?” “No. We’ll be fine.” That was it. That was the system.

There were no real check-ins, no shared language, no acknowledgement of power dynamics, no tools for stepping out of the work once rehearsal ended. Both actors went fully method, which without guidance, without guardrails, without someone trained to navigate that terrain, is incredibly dangerous, especially in a show dealing with trauma. They weren’t supported. They were just placed, physically and emotionally.

And when the show closed, the damage didn’t magically disappear with the strike. There was trauma afterward. Real trauma. According to the actor, all of it could have been avoided if intimacy coordination had been part of the process from the beginning, not a last-minute gesture, not a box to check, not an hour squeezed in when it was already too late to undo weeks of unsafe practice.

This is why “at least they hired someone” isn’t good enough. An intimacy coordinator isn’t a fire extinguisher you grab right before opening night. In some ways, that last-minute move can be worse than doing nothing at all, because it lets organizations tell themselves they did the right thing when they didn’t. It protects the theatre’s optics, not the actors.

So no, I don’t think the real question is whether you can afford an intimacy coordinator for the entire run. The question is what you are doing, concretely and intentionally, to protect your actors. If the answer is “nothing,” stop and choose a different show. If the answer is “we talked about it once,” that’s still not enough. But if the answer is “we brought in professional support early, we set boundaries, we created consent-based processes, we documented choreography, we empowered actors to say no without fear, and we committed to revisiting that work throughout the process,” then we’re finally having a real conversation.

Does that still cost money? Yes. But it doesn’t always mean full-run coverage. There are consultants. Workshops. Training. Some shows absolutely demand a higher bar, and if your production hinges on sustained, repeated physical intimacy or depictions of sexual violence, and you truly cannot secure proper support, it may not be the right show right now. Not never. But now.

Because actors should not be asked to absorb risk just so a season looks edgy.

Community theatre has always leaned on passion. We do it because we love it, because the stories matter. But passion does not replace process. Love does not replace safety. And “we’ve always done it this way” is no longer a defense.

If you’re producing shows like American Idiot or Jagged Little Pill, you’re already making a statement. These stories are loud, political, and raw. So should a community theatre automatically avoid these shows if they can’t afford an intimacy coordinator for the entire process? Not automatically. But if they’re not willing to prioritize actor safety in real, budgeted, visible ways, then yes, they should pause, rethink, raise the money, bring in help, or choose a different show.