"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.

...

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.

...

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."

 

Read the full article on The Arts Desk website through the link below

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

Stage Kiss plays on the Main Stage until 13 June.

BOOK STAGE KISS HERE