Intimacy Coordination

Get an introduction to intimacy on stage!

This workshop provides foundational knowledge of intimacy in live performance, with a particular focus on student and independent theatre. You’ll be introduced to definitions of intimacy, power, and consent in performance and how intimacy directors help build stories of intimate relationships for the stage.

You’ll learn when you should engage an intimacy professional, what to expect when working with one, and how to use some of the same concepts and practices an intimacy director employs to build consent, safety, and trust in any rehearsal processes. Time will be allocated at the end of the session for questions and answers.

Content notice: this workshop will discuss definitions of consent and power, and concepts pertaining to staging simulated sex scenes and nudity, which may be activating for some people.

Attendees will not be asked to discuss personal experiences of any of the concepts addressed by the workshop. All engagement in discussion or practices will be opt-in, and attendees will be free to leave the session at any time.  

Date: Wednesday 30 July
Time: 11am – 1pm
Venue: Guild Theatre, Level 2, Arts and Cultural Building (159)

Spaces are limited, book your spot!

About Margot Fenley

Margot Fenley is an actor, devisor, intimacy professional, director, and educator. She trained as an actor at the VCA University of Melbourne and attained her MFA (Theatre) there in 2021. As an actor, Margot has performed with Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Arts Centre Melbourne, La Mama, Darlinghurst Theatre, Hothouse, and fortyfive downstairs, amongst others, and has appeared in guest roles on numerous Australian TV series throughout her 30-year career. She directed Willow Sizer and Rachel Lewindon’s highly acclaimed musical theatre adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando for Antipodes Theatre at fortyfive downstairs in October 2023and Kikki Temple’s play Stuck for Midsumma 2024 at the Meat Market. Currently, she is directing Shane Woon’s new play A Guide to Being Immortal for Melbourne Fringe, 2025.

Margot was one of eight Australian recipients of an MEAA-Equity Foundation scholarship awarded in 2021 to train as an intimacy professional with IDC (USA), and she now works as an intimacy professional in stage, screen and educational contexts, with some recent credits including Romeo & Julie (dir: Kamarra Bell-Wykes) and Blackout Songs (dir: Tom Healey) for Red Stitch, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (dir: Petra Kalive) at UMSU, the national tour of Grease (dir: Luke Joslin) for XRoads Live, and Neighbours (dir: various)  for Amazon Prime. She is a proud member of the US based Intimacy Professionals Education Collective (IPEC) certification panel for intimacy directors and co-ordinators.

Margot has had an extensive teaching career, including at the University of Melbourne (VCA) from 2009 to mid-2023, where she was the inaugural Head of Music Theatre (2009-2018). Internationally, she has taught for the musical theatre programs at Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) in 2019, at the University of Michigan (2022-23), and at Howard University in Washington DC (2024-25). She has a particular passion of empowering and educating emerging artists to approach intimacy in performance confidently and safely through consent-forward knowledges and practices, and has enjoyed working on several student theatre and film productions as an intimacy professional, including Charlotte Rogers’ production of The Effect (UMSU, 2023), and several short film and theatre projects as part of her teaching roles at the VCA, and in the USA. Margot is represented by Ian White Management and has been a proud member of Actor’s Equity since 1991.

 Website | Showcast listing | Instagram: @margotfenley