Art takes us to the edge. Tests out limits, pushes boundaries, often breaks them. For many creatives, going beyond their limits is the goal, a source of inspiration and a sign they’ve done their best work.
I don’t want to change how far creatives can reach. I want to give them stronger support so they can reach further.
The role of intimacy coordination or direction is new, but the need for supportive, safe, dynamic, and holistic processes for working with nudity, intimacy, and all vulnerable expressions of the body including scenes of violence, extreme body art, modification, and radical body-based performance, has been a long time coming.
Creative protocols need to support the journey to the edge, as well as providing structured integration and aftercare to navigate the road back again.
These programs are designed to add another layer of skills and support to the emerging field of intimacy coordination, and practical mental health support for cast, crew, and performers across creative industries.
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Marisa Garreffa presents talks, intensives, and workshops to support mental health across multiple creative contexts. An experienced performance artist, experimental theatre director, writer, and curator, she draws on her extensive experience to develop methods and processes that work from the body to activate creativity and creative content, while supporting the mental health of performers. A mental health advocate, she is currently in her second year of a Masters in Counseling, and uses all of this research to inform her approaches. These tools create a safer container for creative practice based on informed consent, mental health centred approaches to transitions in and out of performance states, with a special focus on post-project integration. Rather than limit possibility, these approaches create the foundation for more ambitious and boundary testing art expressions.
Garreffa’s work as an artist explores the intersection between creative expression, trauma, and working with multiple modes of telling our stories as an act of research, recovery and resistance. A professional curator, storyteller and performance artist, her work has been performed throughout Asia, Australia, and Europe. Find her writing on Medium.