Understanding the Potential of Intimacy in Groups that Use Arts-Based Activities. A Conversation Between a Theatre Professor and a Social Worker

Abstract

ABSTRACT Can framing intimacy as a necessary and primary outcome of collaboration help group members trust each other across conflicting identities? The theater industry has started welcoming Intimacy education to prevent harm that can arise during the performance of intimate scenarios. In response, academic institutions that train emerging theater makers have created guidelines and policies for intimate collaboration. In the Undergraduate Drama Department at New York University, they’ve created Intimacy Guidelines that include an emphasis on nurturing emotional, intellectual, and experiential intimacy alongside physical intimacy to encourage collaboration that “is vulnerable and brave.” (p. 2). As an NYU Theatre Professor and socially engaged theater maker, the author sees the potential in these guidelines to help students who are working in diverse performance-based group activities address their distrust of others and nurture belonging within the group. Having first experienced intimacy as a phase of the group process through arts-based activities in social work groups, the author interviews a social worker who effectively develops intimacy through arts-based activities in groups. They discuss the potential and limitations of intimacy in groups and reflect on the similarities and differences between a social work group process and the Drama Department’s Intimacy Guidelines.