Stage Kisses

I kissed my teacher last night.

I proceeded to spend the rest of the evening freaking out about it.

My very first stage kiss was actually in an audition. I was called back for "Angels in America: Part 1" in college, and the scene I was reading was between Harper and her husband and has something in it about a "buddy kiss," and there is supposed to be a little..."buddy kiss." The kind of kiss a Mormon couple shares when the husband is gay and the wife is a drug addict. And I was reading with a man who is at least ten years older than me, who I had never worked with before (or hardly even met), but I had to go in for the "buddy kiss" and it was fine. Nerve wracking in a way, but fine, because at that point in my life, I really didn't have that much experience with kissing in general and here I was, new to my acting career, kissing a veteran actor who I'd just met, being called back for the female lead in a mainstage show at the end of my first year at college. There was a lot of pressure. But I think I did okay.

My second stage kiss was in a class in college - my second year of college. I was originally paired with a scene partner who decided he didn't need to come to class or rehearse with me outside of class, so I was re-partnered with a guy in the class who I actually had quite a crush on at the time. The scene was from "A Hatful of Rain," and I played a woman who is pregnant with her husband's child, but in love with my husband's brother. He played my husband's brother, who was also in love with me. At one point in the scene, he is supposed to go in for a kiss and I push him away with a sort of, "Kiss your brother's wife with that mouth?" kind of thing, and then he goes in for a real kiss a couple of lines later which actually lands. Well, in my first rehearsal with this new scene partner, we were sitting across the table from one another just reading the script. When it came time for his first move, he kind of leaned across the table like he was going to go for the kiss, which surprised me - I didn't know we were doing that in the read through. So a couple of lines later, when the kiss was supposed to happen, I decided I would be the polite actor and meet him halfway because it was kind of a big table and it just seemed like the nice thing to do. Silly me. We both went up for the kiss and ended up smashing faces. I think I split his lip in the collision. Not exactly the kind of stage kiss you want to have, especially not when it is a first impression of sorts on a new scene partner on whom you have a crush.

I have done many more stage kisses since then. And a fair amount of normal kissing, too. And for the most part, people tell me I'm good at it - men and women, because I have kissed both men and women. But I have to say, stage kisses are a strange sort.

With normal kisses, it's generally safe to say that both parties like each other, at least a little bit. First kisses can be a little scary, but you usually know that this is okay. Or the first one can be tentative to feel out where the other person is, with the more passionate kisses following later, once you both know you're on the same page. Yes, things like the taste of your breath and the softness of your lips factor in a bit, but there is some leeway there. If you really dig someone, you may kiss them even though they just had a cigarette and you don't smoke. Or, if this is someone you've been with for a long time, they know that your lips get chapped in the winter, so it's no big deal.

With stage kisses, this is something you have to do for the sake of the scene, regardless of how you feel about the other person or how the other person feels about you. You could loathe one another, but the script says you're madly in love, so you have to kiss. And you know that they don't want to any more than you do, but you suck it up and try to make it look good for the audience. Or maybe you really do like your scene partner, but your scene partner is married or involved with someone else. You want to put on a good show for the audience (and so it will affect your partner), but you don't want to be perceived as pushing it so far as to be inappropriate. Or perhaps your partner isn't attracted to people of your gender. There's that old adage from men doing sex scenes who say to their partners, "I'm sorry if I get turned on, and I'm sorry if I don't get turned on." In some ways, there's just no way to win in these situations. You just have to hope that your breath doesn't stink, that you don't split anyone's lip open, and that you can both just get through it with minimal damage.

And it's that much weirder when the stage kiss happens with your teacher.

So, to set the scene from last night's class, we were up on our feet doing our monologues. My piece is essentially about how much I want to screw over my sister. I'm tired of being overlooked (middle-child syndrome), my husband is dead, I killed the guy who killed my husband, I gouged a man's eyes out, and I now have my sites set on the dashing (and conniving) bastard son of the guy who's eyes I poked out. My sister wants him too, even though she already has a husband. So in my monologue, I'm talking to my sister's messenger/cabana boy, trying to get him to let me read this letter my sister wrote to the hot bastard son. And I'm supposed to give the messenger/cabana boy a token of some sort to give to the hot bastard son so when my sister sees it, she'll know I'm boinking him, too. "If you do find him, pray you give him this/And when your Mistress hears thus much from you/I pray desire her call her wisdom to her." Meaning, "When you see the bastard, give him this. And when my sister hears about it, hold on to your hats, boys, 'cuz she's gonna blow." So anyway.

In class last night, the teachers were coaching us through the monologues. In some cases, when a monologue is directed to someone specific, they will jump in and play the part of that someone specific so that we can have someone to focus on and get reactions out of and play with and whatnot. So the male teacher jumped in to play the messenger/cabana boy. He folded up a piece of paper (which was supposed to be the letter from my sister to the bastard that I want to read) and shoved it down the front of his pants. So I molested him. There is the line, "I'll love thee much," basically saying, "I'll screw your brains out if you let me read that letter," so it wasn't totally uncalled for. And when he shoved me off, I flew into a rage against him and my sister. By the line, "If you do find him, pray you give him this," I was angry and sexy and powerful and threatening, so the "this" was a kiss. I stormed over and kissed my teacher, so that he, as the messenger/cabana boy would have to either then go deliver my message by kissing the bastard, or he would have to tell my sister that I kissed the bastard (through him) or whatever. It put him in the lovely awkward position of having to deliver a message that he really doesn't have a good way to deliver. It was not a romantic kiss. It was a kiss of power and control and belittlement. And then I get to shove him off and tell him he should go kill the dude whose eyes I gouged out.

I have to admit, it was great. It felt great - the whole monologue felt great. It is a piece that kind of depends on the reactions of the man I'm talking to, and my teacher gave me a lot to work with which was fabulous. He's so fun! And in retrospect, I'm proud of myself for taking that chance. It has been a while since I got to do this. I'm understudying a show at the moment, so while I am going to rehearsals three times a week, I don't get to work while I'm there. I get to watch other people work. It is interesting to watch other people work and see their process, but it does tend to make me self-conscious about my process. Especially when I see how I would do things differently, but they were cast and I was not, that kind of thing. Anyway. It felt great to be back on my feet, moving about, taking chances, following impulses, going "balls out," so to speak. And the whole class really responded to it. The teachers said I did great work. It was a good class and I needed that.

But as soon as my monologue ended, I was mortified that I had kissed my teacher. Mortified. He is a professional actor. He has been on Broadway and various television shows and movies and he has the phone number of an author I really like in his cell phone. He has been to the Tonys. And here's me, still learning this craft, and I just go up and plant one on him in class? What the fuck gives me the right to invade his personal space like that?

The fact that I was in class gives me the right.

But still. I started freaking out about all of the stupid things, too - were my lips too tense? Should I have put on lip balm first? Did I have too much lip balm on? I wasn't as worried about my breath because it was a closed-mouth kiss, but still. All of those silly things you worry about when you kiss someone out of the blue were compounded by the fact that this is my teacher. I don't know that a director would ever block the scene so that Regan kisses Oswald there - I don't know if anyone would find that an appropriate action. But it was an impulse I had in the moment in the scene and he was there so I followed it and holy crap I kissed my teacher. In what context is that appropriate?

In the context that this was class and he was functioning as my scene partner in an attempt to get me to push my boundaries.

But he's my teacher. On whom I have an Artist Crush. I told my classmates during the break that I was mortified at what I had done and they were very supportive. And some teasing happened. They started trying to figure out ways they could work a kiss with the teacher into their pieces because let's face it, everyone who meets this man develops a crush on him of some sort. One guy was like, "Kissed the teacher: check!" Like a life goal had been accomplished. So I felt a little better about it. But still. I don't think I offended him or pissed him off or anything, but if I did, I apologize. I think we all know that it was the context of the scene and this power trip my character was on and really, I just want to someday be able to do a scene like this. But I grabbed his butt, too. Something about my performance last night had to be inappropriate on some level, and for that, I apologize.

Just between you and me, though, given the opportunity, I'd do the whole thing all over again.