As my mother always says, every work of art is somehow built around the theme of love. “Stop Kiss,” a play by Diana Son, is no exception.
Well, maybe a little. This play, directed by senior theater arts major Minnie Goode for the Pocket Playhouse, is a story about two women who fall in love. But the fact that they are women is not important. While watching the scenes between the two of them, it is just as easy to picture the dialogue happening between two people of the opposite sex. Where the homosexuality becomes important is in what results from the first kiss between Sara and Callie.
The women are beaten by an unidentified assailant who responds angrily to their kissing, and Sara ends up in a coma in the hospital. The play unfolds in a series of scenes that take place before and after this event, ultimately leading to the kiss as the last scene.
Audience members never see the beating happen, which leaves them with conflicting emotions of happiness that the girls have found each other and anxiety because they know what will happen. Instead, Kirsten Schmieding, who plays Mrs. Winsley and the nurse, said the audience feels the repercussions of the event in scenes dealing with the aftermath.
“You hear about hate crime, but what you don’t hear about is all the other victims and how their lives are affected by this type of violence,” said Schmieding. “In this play, you get to see the ripples from the rock.”This statement holds a truth to the play in another way. Goode double-cast the two leads, Sara and Callie, in order to do a theater exercise called “splashing.” What Goode has done is rehearse two pairs of main characters separately with the staple members of the cast. When the show begins on Friday, the couples who have rehearsed together will be broken up and re-paired with actresses who know the lines, but not the interpersonal dynamics.”It’s going to be like seeing a different show,” cast member Kat Reese said. “It’s so exciting, my atoms are zinging.”
Even though the staple characters have been rehearsing with both casts of main characters, their characters interact differently with the different leads. The whole cast expressed excitement and nervousness about the uncertain nature of their performances.
This unorthodox way of producing a show will make for very interesting theater. However, if you don’t want to take the risk, you can see the pairs that have already rehearsed together during the 2 p.m. performances Saturday and Sunday.
Any way you see it, the show will be good. It deals with a very serious issue but is not dominated by it. In the end, it is still a great production of two people falling in love.