Perhaps fate led me inevitably to the theatre as a great love because my first kiss was in a scene study class when I was 14 years old. My scene partner and I were working on a sweet little scene that ended in a kiss; at least, that’s what the stage directions told us.
We were studying with the great Chicago acting teacher Joyce Piven. At the end of our performance for the class, the very sweet young man I was acting with planted one on me. I drew back in surprise, and Joyce said, in her unmistakable deep growl to the young actor, “Dear boy, you have to plan these things first!”
I never became much of an actor, but I did, and do, create worlds for them by writing plays. And so, over the course of the last two decades, I have seen actors negotiating the delicate dance of how to kiss one another in rehearsal. These were the days before intimacy coordinators, and I would sit behind my table and think: how odd that this is my job, that this is the actor’s job, trying to manufacture a kiss that seems real. They get to go to work and kiss! And I get to watch them! And then the director tells them if it seems real. (Sarah Ruhl pictured below)
I figured that their bodies must tell them, too, if the kiss felt real or manufactured, but no one else knew. Unless, that is, we got a drink afterwards at the bar, where I’d hear about so-and-so’s bad breath, or a total lack of chemistry. And so I wrote a play about actors kissing, Stage Kiss, opening May 8 at Hampstead Theatre. The premise is that two ex-lovers get cast in a bad 1930s drama in which they have to kiss several times a day. Emotional chaos ensues.
Forty or so years after my first kiss, in front of my mentor, I found myself at Joyce Piven's funeral. She’d lived a long life, into her nineties, teaching generations of Chicago artists how to act, improvise, and make theatre. This incredible woman had seen so many of my firsts - my first kiss, my first play, my first (and let’s hope only) wedding. I grieved deeply for her, and I stood up to give a eulogy. In my eulogy, I had referenced the story of my first kiss, as a bit of comic relief. Little did I know that the actor who had kissed me many years ago would be sitting three people down from me at the funeral. I hadn’t seen him in years and had no idea if he remembered the anecdote. I thought, "Oh dear, should I skip this part, it might embarrass him?" So I ran the eulogy by him ahead of my speech. He gave me permission, although he did look a little startled and mortified. I gave my eulogy, got a laugh about the kiss (I figured Joyce appreciated comedy as well as tragedy), and withheld the name of the scene partner who had kissed me. Just to be clear, I thought the story was funny, and rather sweet - it didn’t occur to me that it might have had overtones in the current era of neglecting to obtain consent.
After the service, we went to the gravesite, and we each shovelled dirt on Joyce’s coffin. Afterwards, at a family house, while I was eating some falafel, Joyce’s great-nephew - let’s call him G - cornered me. “I have to speak to you,” he said, red-faced and urgent. “Of course,” I said. G led me to the kitchen. “What is it?” I asked, worried. I had studied acting with him at the workshop when we were young, and since then we’d collaborated on some theatre projects with music. “Was it me?” G. asked. “In your story?” “What story?” I asked. “The one where a boy kissed you in scene study class without your permission. I was in that class,” He said. “No!” I said. “It was ___.” “Oh, God,” G. sputtered, “I’m so relieved.”
Another actress, who had grown rather famous on a television show, had sat next to G at the funeral and told him she remembered the whole thing, and she insisted that it was he who had kissed me. G denied it, she doubled down, and now he felt gaslit in addition to confused. G said, “I thought, not only might I have offended you, but maybe I was so callous as a teenage boy that I didn’t even remember kissing you! How awful!” “No, no!” I said, “It wasn’t you, and honestly, the whole thing was minor and kind of sweet!” I didn’t tell him that I was a 14-year-old with a dramatic and romantic imagination, and wanted to be kissed, even if it was in a theatre class. My first real kiss was still two years away. I felt terrible that my kissing story had caused him any consternation in the midst of his grief. But then again, I’m sure that Joyce would have approved of us laughing about the relationship between art and life as we celebrated her - a great icon of truth telling in world of illusion.
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