Stage Kiss - Goodman Theatre

“She’s really trying to get at this emotional
truth that I find to be very exciting…
and she does it through a highly
theatrical language, which is appealing
to any director.”
—Director Jessica Thebus on Playwright Sarah Ruhl
and what is imagined—assuming the
two can ever really be separated.
In a 2008 profile in The New Yorker by
critic John Lahr, Ruhl described her desire
as a playwright to capture “how people
subjectively experience life…. Everyone
has a great, horrible opera inside him.”
In Stage Kiss, He and She, whose past
love affair is given a new form and a new
language in the often hilarious but clunky
1930s play, find themselves struggling to
parse the difference between their interior
drama and the roles they’ve been hired
to perform. What results is a very human
exploration of love, nostalgia and commitment,
and how we perform not only roles
on the stage—but also the roles we take
on and shed throughout our everyday lives.
In a recent conversation with the
Goodman’s Director of New Play
Development, Tanya Palmer, Ruhl and
her longtime collaborator Jessica Thebus
talk about how this play emerged, what
connects it to Ruhl’s previous work and
what fuels their collaboration.
Tanya Palmer: What was the initial
inspiration for Stage Kiss?
And to what extent do these external
gestures reflect or change internal states?
I was interested in looking at that phenomenon.
And as I read more 1930s
Broadway chestnuts, I was interested in
the question of the language of intimacy
more broadly. That is, who is to say
what’s a more “real” way of talking about
love; our shaggy televised way of talking
about love in the year 2011, or the highflown
romantic language of the ’30s?
TP: The two of you have collaborated on
a number of plays through the years—
including the Goodman’s production of
The Clean House and Steppenwolf’s production
of Dead Man’s Cell Phone, among
many others. What elements draw you
together as collaborators so frequently?
SR: I love working with Jessica because
at this point we have a shared vocabulary.
Things I always love about Jessica
are her sense of playfulness, her visual
imagination and her gifts as a storyteller.
Jessica Thebus: I’m drawn to Sarah’s
work because it’s so truthful. It feels like
she is always exploring and digging at
the heart of a true experience—an experience
which is difficult to get to or put into
words. She’s really trying to get at this
emotional truth—about grief, about love,
about relationships, about acceptance—
that I find very exciting, and she does
it through a highly theatrical language,
which is appealing to any director. But to
me, that makes the struggles of the characters
in the play feel even more true,
because it conveys what it’s like to be in
your own head struggling with something.
The language is very theatrical—you
could even say magical—and that’s
always delightful to put on the stage. But
it goes with the emotional heart of the
play—she uses that theatrical language to
really capture what it’s like to have a certain
kind of fantasy, or obsession, or fear,
and so it feels very familiar in an unusual
and very, very exciting way.
TP: As a director, what do you most strongly
connect with in this particular play?
JT: I think the temptation to make your
fantasy real. We’re in a business where
everyone is always hugging each other
and where your bread and butter is fan-
Sarah Ruhl: Watching rehearsals for the
past 15 years or so, I got to thinking,
“What a weird job it must be to have to
kiss people in front of other people.” And
of course any kiss has some reality on
stage, as does drinking a glass of water
on stage or urinating on stage. But to
what extent is the kiss a performance?
SYNOPSIS
Actors and ex-lovers He and She are thrown together as the romantic leads in a
present-day revival of a long-forgotten 1930s melodrama; neither has seen the other
in the 20 years following their break-up. In that time She has married and had a
daughter; He is currently living with a girlfriend. Once rehearsals for the play begin,
they quickly lose touch with reality as the romantic story onstage begins to follow
them offstage. Stage Kiss explores what happens when these lovers share a stage
kiss—or a real one.
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