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Kiss me, you fool!

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!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 14:24 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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6 Responses to “Kiss me, you fool!”

  1. Patrick Shields says:
    Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 21:29

    Agree! I have never really had much physical improv on stage yet. I was raised to not be particularly physical; even initiating a hug or a pat on the back makes me feel uncomfortable. But I plan to get over it by moving out to the plaza in November and obliterating my social fears by talking to at least five new people every day. That way, I won’t worry irrationally about losing a friend by doing something physical.

    Being in both Hype 7 and the Roving Imps, it seems to me like one of the main problems is getting troupe members to be willing to embarrass themselves. I think a lot of us get into these psuedo-egos where we do only what we know will be funny. And while it works in the short term, it’s terrible for growth. I hate seeing ego on stage, because it causes resistance to growth, but a lot of improvisers (myself included) have it to varying degrees.

    How can we get rid of people’s egos so that we can blast through the troupes’ final sticking points and become the type of troop that people flock to come see? I think we can do it with effort on the part of each troop member, an open mind, a willingness to experiment, and constant, new exercises that force us to forget our egos and invest even further in the scene.

  2. Patrick Shields says:
    Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 21:30

    By the way, my ride situation is probably handled so that I will still be coming to practices and shows after I move. :)

  3. James Nelson says:
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 10:54

    Interesting issue.

    I think the problem is that a lot of us improvisers (especially in our still-growing community) haven’t really reached a very truthful point in our improv. I have yet to see an improv show that plays as realistically as the straight plays I am used to viewing. Even in very experienced troupes, there is still that general “hee hee, I’m doing improv” tone set for the show.

    I think that a kiss is a very serious physical initiation that honestly, in most shows, hasn’t been earned. Sure, it can be a way of gathering some laughs if you put two unlikely people (men, siblings) in a situation where it is called for…but to me, I think that before improv actors can take their physicality to the next level, they must take their commitment to the next level.

    Evidence of this? Many people who see professional Chicago troupes play come back with stories of full make-outs with no hesitation. Is it that these actors are more ballsy? Or that they’re simply more committed?

  4. John Robison says:
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 11:34

    If you get a chance, you ought to come see Nifer and I do Biblioclast. Since it’s based on literature, most of which is not funny, we’ve been doing some of the most honest and compelling scenes I’ve ever done on stage. They’re still very interesting, but not the kind of laugh-out-loud funny you normally expect from an improv show. Will it play to the audience? Who knows. Time will tell.

    No on-stage kissing in this show yet, although there was a joyful tongue bath reunion between two of the characters in Beckett’s “Endgame” last Saturday. On second thought, that produced some laughing out loud.

  5. Jenifer Harmon says:
    Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 10:26

    Awesome… now I can follow this discussion in three different places. City3 seems to be functioning again - maybe the page not loading had something to do with the lack of response. Or maybe it was just my computer, and people are really uncomfortable with the topic.

    James, did you see that same Jinx show that Scott posted about?

    “How can we get rid of people’s egos so that we can blast through the troupes’ final sticking points and become the type of troop that people flock to come see?”
    “I think the problem is that a lot of us improvisers (especially in our still-growing community) haven’t really reached a very truthful point in our improv.”

    Maybe the initial question isn’t about kissing after all.

  6. Tom Farnan says:
    Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 00:30

    This is great! John..I posted very similar feelings on city3 before reading your take, and where yours is thoughtful and eloquent mine is snarky and edgey! kissing, touching or the lack thereof is always the tension, I could not agree more….

    And I am from this Chicago mindset James speaks of, being involved in my share of groping, and make out sessions, as well as on the improv stage too…………anybody?

    I’m not sure if I fully agree with James that you must earn the ability to reach that level of intimacy on stage. It’s part of performance, and if you aren’t comfortable with it or ready to do it, why are you performing? (not you james, I’m speaking generally) And if you think you have to wait until you’ve mastered other tenants of improv before you are worthy to get physical with a scene partner then you will be waiting very long time.

    My philosophy is, ‘how you gonna know unless you try it?’ So why wait to get honest in your scene work? When, in this still growing community, are you gonna get honest? Now, would be the correct answer.

    Honesty, is the very root of what we’re doing up there. You can be honest in your next show, and what if I told you that it wasn’t your job to monitor the level of honesty of your fellow performers, just yours? (ring bells harmon?)

    You cannot lie on stage…You can try, but everything that you do is honest. It has to be if you want this to be successful. This truthful point that you speak of is not necessarily the reward you get for completing a level on a video game, it’s something that has existed in you since the first moment you all stepped out on stage and improvised, and it’s that surge of energy, electricity, etc., that kept you coming back for more….So Harmon you’re correct, this isn’t about kissing, this is about allowing yourself to be honest on stage, or in some cases re-allowing it. And that is what’s being taught in Chicago, and that is why everyone gets freaky with each other up there. And yes commitment is part of it, and yet again that comes back to honesty, truthfulness. If you’re honest, you’re committed. They are not mutually exclusive of one another, however how many people do you know that are in a seriously committed relationship with one another where that relationship didn’t reek of honesty?

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