Hello everyone. Shhh…quiet please. I’m writing this from my “Safe Space” and I don’t like a lot of outside noise and I’m already feeling triggered. My “safe space” is a secret, magical, hypothetical place where nobody questions me or my values, uses “problematic language”, or tells me no. Back on earth, the organization Advocates for Youth states on their website that a safe space is “a place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome or challenged.” In short: a place that doesn’t actually exist. In recent years, college students have been welcomed into safe spaces like Hillary Clinton’s welcomed at CNN. But it raises the question: what actually is safe and, more importantly, what are we safe from? The ideals of this can’t be qualified, let alone quantified. They’re endless. While the original intent of a safe space probably grew out of a desire to give marginalized communities an opportunity to share their experiences–something I find as an LGBT person both necessary and moving–creating a space where “no one is made to feel uncomfortable” creates a utopian nightmare. In fact, for us to learn about these marginalized people and situations, shouldn’t we need to feel some sort of discomfort? No pain no gain, or does fear not exist in this dojo? Here is where the paradox begins.
During my last year of college, shortly after the James Polk administration, professors in the theatre department started putting up signs on their office doors that said, “This is an LGBT safe space”—this was before we added Q, I, A, and whatever letters are left. It was a little bumper sticker with a rainbow triangle which I suppose was to let the gay kids know that they would not be beaten up if they went into that office. This, of course, was intended to be a kind hearted gesture; a way to let the LGBT kids feel visible and heard, something I would actually like to see more of. But therein quickly arose a problem. Not every professor got the memo that the safe space stickers existed. By putting these virtue signalers on their doors, the professors then by process of elimination labeled all of the other doors in the hallways as (gasp) NOT safe spaces. When walking past the pottery teacher’s classroom and noticing the glaring omission of the sticker, the students had to ask, “Did she forget it, or is she a member of the Westboro Baptist Church?” By delineating a safe space, the faculty ironically also created an unsafe space. Not to mention, I really believe at least some of these people were definitely using safe spaces as a way to manipulate someone to have sex with them. The creepy janitor had both a rainbow bumper sticker and at least three severed heads in his freezer.
If you have been living under a rock, Broadway is still currently more shutdown than the Chernobyl power plant.. Actors Equity has been increasingly under fire from its members for not allowing theaters to reopen due to unattainable and unrealistic safety requirements–replacing ventilation systems, private transportation for all the actors, plexiglass onstage–to name a few. To be fair, the union’s job is to protect its members, but it is widely agreed upon in the industry that the protocols they have required theaters to implement create impossible scenarios that prolong the closure of the industry. They also recently released a statement saying they are intent on bringing their members back to work when it is “safe”. It must be asked though: what is this idealized version of “safe” to which Equity is referring? Let’s be optimistic and say that with vaccinations the United States is able to get the number of Covid cases to numbers resembling something like whooping cough, a virus that still exists but that no one really has to worry about. What about all of the other perils an actor faces by working on a production? No one really publicly talked about the number of deaths that the regular flu causes every year until 2020, but it’s in the tens of thousands. Are we going to shut down theatre until that’s under control too? The unions have been ok with us breathing in asbestos in all the Broadway theaters for the past 90 years and haven’t ever waited until that got taken care of. And is this the same union that didn’t close “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark”, the show that was literally dropping flying actors in the audience? Equity needs to clarify their idealized version of “safe” because, all productions pose a risk to the performer as soon as they have to leave for the theatre.
Speaking of leaving the theatre, the new role of “intimacy director” is a creative team position being added to increasingly more productions around the United States. An “ID” is a professional trained to oversee scenes involving intimacy, nudity, or sexual content. This newly created—and seemingly required—position appears to have been a by product of the #MeToo movement during which many actors expressed ways in which they’d been made to feel uncomfortable on the set or in the rehearsal room. Until recently, scenes of intimacy were to be left up to the director to handle, but in the theatre of today this job is left to a “trained” intimacy director. While no doubt there are for sure benefits to this, there also appears to be an apparent overcorrection which has led to many shows proudly boasting their intimacy director credit without really requiring it. Does Dorothy hugging the Scarecrow at the end of Wizard of Oz really require an extra weekly salary added to production? Articles in the New York Times and other publications have detailed the rise of the intimacy director and its necessity in order to make actors feel safe. I don’t think anyone would argue that it is of paramount importance for delicate scenes involving any kind of intimacy to be handled with the utmost sensitivity, and for producers to reassure their casts that they will be in the hands (no pun intended) of a professional who will make them feel comfortable. But here’s the part I don’t get: what if the intimacy director makes you feel uncomfortable? Sure, the person has been trained, but who is to say that they can be responsible for everyone feeling ok? We’ve just now appointed a different person who could potentially be abusive into a position of power. It’s all fun and games until you walk into your rehearsal room and the intimacy director is John Wayne Gacy. This is just another person who has been given the title of making you feel safe. And yes, it’s definitely better than someone who has no training or protocol in how to make people feel comfortable, but since when is this a guarantee to not make you uncomfortable? You can be weirded out at any time, intimacy director or not.
The theatre scene of 2021 is throttling art. There is no safety. When we feel we have achieved safety, that’s when we realize it was at the expense of everything we truly hold dear: expression. Safety is the suppression of emotion. Safety is the embracement of fear. Safety is truly unsafe and unsettling to our souls. And don’t you dare disagree with me because I’m in my “safe space” and confrontation triggers me. –NP
