Kiss me, you fool!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by John Robison.

Kissing on stage…

I’d like to throw my two cents at this topic. It’s been brought up on the KC Improv blog as well as city3.org. It hasn’t created as much talk as I thought it might, so I’ll go ahead and be long-winded on my own.

I posted a blog a few months ago about my personal problems with physical contact, which I’m still working on, and I still have not had an improvised stage kiss… just putting that out there, so that you’ll know that what follows is a purely theoretical and intellectual discussion.

Some people are worried about emotional weird feelings once the actors leave the stage. I think there can be emotional repercussion (we’re only human, after all), but usually only if there were some sort of emotions floating around anyway. Two actors should be able to kiss one another at any moment, and it means nothing. I’ve done it tons of times on the scripted stage, with folks half my age, underage, 10 years older than me, people I couldn’t really stand, and even one that matched my gender. Were there crushes occasionally? Sure… but none that didn’t already exist. I believe that if you’re really there for the art, and aren’t using improv as some really ineffective dating service, you should be able to kiss anybody at anytime.

That’s one of the things about working with your family… it’s bound to happen one day… and you’d better hope the rest of your troupe is paying attention to help you avoid it. My sister, Julie,  routinely is onstage with me in the role of my girlfriend or wife, and we have (thank goodness) not managed to get even close. Except for once.   Nifer and Julie were playing a game of Stunt Double, with me as the stunt double. About a third of the way through the game, Nifer says, “Why don’t we just make out?” and then calls for a stunt double. Of course, she didn’t realize what she had done. The entire audience was rolling with laughter as they saw me slowly eke towards my own sister on stage, both of us completely out of character, but still completely playing the game. Somehow, out of some stroke of genius, as I was only a foot from here, she called out “STUNT DOUBLE!!” and ran off the stage, leaving me to make out with myself. Nifer still feels bad about it.

Now for the statement that lets you know how serious I am about this issue. In the case above, it was WAY funnier NOT to kiss. If it had somehow been funnier to do it, I would have kissed her. Not because I wanted to, or not because I enjoy inflicting mental anguish on my family members, but because the scene needed it. I think you have to be prepared to do whatever the scene needs at any given moment, with no consequences later. Let the scene happen, and go along for the ride. See where it takes you. Just because you play a pedophile in a scene on stage does not mean that you actually are. Just because you’ve kissed someone on stage doesn’t mean that you would do it in real life.

I haven’t found that it’s any easier to kiss men than it is women. Just recently, I was doing a Trivial Prov-suit show with the very talented and funny James Nelson. A scene came up where we were playing an odd musical instrument that in my mind was a single pipe with a hole at the top. Both of us were playing it, and our mouths were so very close that I suddenly felt a wee bit uncomfortable. The audience loved it, of course, and it turned out to be funnier to simply be uncomfortable than it would have been to break the tension by actually kissing him.

I guess in the end, that’s the whole deal… many times an actual kiss represents the dissolution of sexual tension or aggression, and tension is interesting to see on stage. So unless you’re at the very end of the set, showing an actual kiss may threaten to derail the energy you’ve got flowing… that’s why in so many old movies, the very last thing that happens is the two main characters finally kiss before fading to black. Where do you go from there in a scene? It’s resolution.

Unless it’s not… maybe that kiss actually is contributing to the energy build. Maybe that kiss is not the end of the sexual tension at all, but merely a suggestion of things to come. In that case, boy howdy, have you got some heightening to do. If you were a little leary about kissing someone, how do you feel about taking that kiss to the next level? Be prepared!

I think that there’s a definite time for on-stage improvised kissing, and you just have to feel it in the moment, just like anything else. To be funny, sometimes it’s appropriate to float across the stage in an out-of-control hot air balloon. Sometimes you have to become a basement gnome that eats potatoes. And sometimes to be funny you have to kiss your scene partner. The same thing goes for a more dramatic scene. If you’re in a tender moment with the person playing your spouse, it’s unnatural not to do it. If you don’t, you yank the audience out of the scene with your uncomfortableness, and destroy what you’ve worked so hard to create. If it’s a dramatic scene, make it look real. If it’s comedic, make it funny. Just do it, and don’t wuss out.

Agree? Disagree? Have cool stories of your own? I’d love to hear!

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