There is the kind of kiss that makes time stop. And the kind, seen by the wrong kind of witness, that can stop a life.
Diana Son’s 1998 “Stop Kiss” is not an incendiary political diatribe about the horror of gay-bashing. It’s no militant rant on intolerance. Instead, it’s most remarkable for how ordinarily it shows how the simple affection between two self-identified heterosexual women builds into one cataclysmic kiss.
But what that story says about the violence that has been perpetrated against gays for centuries is deafening.
That Son chose two women who have never before explored same-sex attraction is probably what still makes her play so unsettling to larger audiences. She’s floating the idea that sexuality is fluid. And suggesting that, with the right synapses firing, anyone might find themselves experimenting. And on the wrong end of a Matthew Shepard-style beating. Maybe even you.
Son presents two fairly unremarkable women. Callie is a caustic New York traffic reporter; doe-eyed Sara is a schoolteacher just off the bus from St. Louis. Both have had boyfriends. Yet they connect in a way that’s confusing and impossible to label. Callie isn’t attracted to women. She’s simply attracted to this woman.
The play tells two interwoven stories: One shows the progression of this budding friendship. The other begins with one of the women in a coma with a crushed skull. The resulting media attention inevitably reduces both women to an easy, simplistic label: lesbian. But are they? And does that matter?
How we look at this play, now being staged by a daring young community troupe called Theatre ‘D Art in Colorado Springs, and again next month by Denver’s Equinox Theatre Company, depends on the calendar.
The times dictate how we respond to any piece of art. “Stop Kiss” opened in New York just two months after the Shepard murder. Today, we’re all over the map. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed, “I Kissed a Girl” is a chart-topping radio ditty . . . and bullying is driving gay teens to commit suicide.
Into this swirl comes a modest production being staged in a 40-seat studio theater at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
The play is a series of rapid-fire scenes that require a desperate urgency in their telling. But it instead plays out as one loooong act that benefits from the “theater in your lap” sense of intimacy, but is greatly hindered by the need for distinct playing areas — Callie’s living room, the hospital and the police station. There’s room here for only one.
Budding actors Holly Lynn Rogers (Callie) and Taffy Burnett (Sara) give their level best but could have benefitted from a stronger directorial hand. Their friendship builds as friendships do: taking in a movie, going out to eat. Talking. Connecting. In performance, that calls for the actors to reach a state of utter naturalism, which is the hardest thing to achieve on a stage.
And any chance at urgency is quashed by two dozen set changes. These transitions allow for an eclectic soundtrack ranging from LCD Soundsystem to James Brown to David Bowie to Denmark’s Choir of Young Believers, but the momentum slows to a leisurely crawl.
Director Crystal Carter intentionally, and mistakenly, blurs the time gap by selectively updating Son’s script with modern references to Skyping and texting, but this is a play that really needs to be considered from Son’s chosen time. We can glean the modern relevance on our own.
By all rights, Sara and Callie deserve a love story that simply explores the mystery of human attraction. But for all the progress we have made as a society, we still live in a world where a kiss is never just a kiss.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Stop Kiss” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Drama. Presented by Theatre ‘D Art in the Osborne Studio Theater in University Hall at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. Written by Diana Son. Directed by Crystal Carter. Through Sunday. 2 hours, 5 minutes, no intermission. 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday (Jan. 14-16), plus 2 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 15). $5-$10. 719-357-8321 or
