Two actors, and former lovers, unexpectedly reunite when cast opposite each other in a forgotten 1930s melodrama. As rehearsals progress and onstage romance echoes their past, the lines between performance and real life begin to blur. Their rekindled chemistry sparks a funny, tender, and sometimes chaotic exploration of desire, loyalty, and the complexity of relationships.
All the while, life imitates art and art imitates life. With sparkling dialogue and her signature wit, playwright Sarah Ruhl (In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, The Clean House) shows how even a single kiss can upend everything in this whimsical and insightful theatrical romp now showing at the New Theatre in Newtown.
Led by returning director Alice Livingstone (Jumpers for Goalposts) the ensemble cast includes some brand-new faces, and some familiar ones. Emma Delle-Vedove (Jumpers For Goalposts, The Women, Jerusalem, Vernon God Little, Canary), Nicola Denton (Debut), Victoria Fowler (Debut), Lynden Jones (To Kill A Mockingbird, The Weir, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, August: Osage County), Nicholas Papademetriou (Loot, The Front Page, The Angry Brigade), Frank Shanahan (Debut), and Jason Spindlow (Debut).
From the director, Alice Livingstone: “Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss is a love letter to theatre and romance. She even dedicates it “For actors. For first loves.” And she quotes Iris Murdoch: “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”
Essentially, the play explores the difference between reality and fantasy, between real life and imagination, and the extraordinary headiness of ‘being in love’. It also breaks open the mystery of theatre, how a production is made. It has very funny moments as well as quite poignant ones, and touches on different genres, from 1930s melodrama to edgy 1970s urban grit and the everyday of contemporary life in the theatre and beyond.”
Sarah Ruhl: “Most plays I’ve written have some kissing in them. And when I come to work, sit behind a table, and watch people kiss for a job, knowing that the actors have also come to work, and are now kissing for a job… well, over the years, I’ve thought, how strange. And so, I wanted to write a play about the phenomenon of kissing on stage.
The indefinable slipping point between the actuality of the kiss and the illusion of the kiss reminds me of the actuality of love and the stories we tell ourselves about love. The ordinariness of a long and stable relationship is non-narrative by nature, whereas the combustible romance (and I think the word “romance” almost implies an ending) has extraordinary narrative power over us. Our imaginations want a romance, our practical natures want a marriage. So, what to do? How to live?”
Sarah Ruhl is an award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her plays include The Oldest Boy, Dear Elizabeth, Stage Kiss, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); and The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into fourteen languages.
CREATIVE TEAM
Director Alice Livingstone
Set Designer Merle Leuschner
Costume Designer Bianca De Nicola
Lighting DesignerHolly Nesbitt
Intimacy Director Sonya Kerr
Dialect Coach Benjamin Purser
Fight Choreographer Diego Retamales
Stage Manager Bianca Dreis
Production Assistant Emily Saint-Smith
Photo credit: Bob Seary
CAST
Emma Delle-Vedove, Nicola Denton, Victoria Fowler, Lynden Jones, Nicholas Papademetriou, Frank Shanahan, Jason Spindlow
DATES/TIMES
Opening Night Fri 20 Mar 7:30pm
Season Thu – Sat 7:30pm, Sun 2pm
Final performance Sat 11 Apr 2pm
TICKETS
Full $45
Concessions, Groups (6+) $40
New Theatre Members $30
Thrifty Thursdays $30
BOOKINGS: Book New Theatre