There are several different ways to define love. There's the unconditional love you feel for family members, and the romantic love you experience after carefully developing a relationship with a significant other. Then there's the type of love that is based purely on trust and friendship - a love that often burns stronger and lasts far longer than all others.
But what happens when the lines between these various forms of the sacred L-word are blurred? Pen, Paint, and Pretzel's (3Ps) production of Stop Kiss, which opens tonight in the Balch Arena Theater, attempts to answer this question by taking a look at the intertwining lives of two young women living in the bustling world of New York City. The play was written just last year by Diana Son.
Junior Rah-nee Kelly, armed with previous directing experience from last year's Picasso at the Lapine Agile and The Vagina Monologues, chose the piece based on its modernity and accessibility. Kelly stumbled upon the play by accident while scouring scripts and considering options for a 3Ps direction project. She liked its unique blend of tongue-and-cheek humor and sophistication.
"It's about contact, friendship, and confrontation with what you don't want to deal with but are forced to," Kelly said, citing that the material is challenging not just for her but also for the actors and the audience.
Structurally similar to last semester's How I Learned to Drive, Stop Kiss explores the relationship between Callie (senor Rachel Evans) and Sarah (senior Rachel Jablin) by sharing episodic slices-of-life that piece together the greater story at hand. Both women are single and heterosexual, with Callie maintaining a friends-with-benefits relationship with George (freshman Kevin Miller) while Sarah attempts to escape the clutches of her possessive ex-boyfriend Peter (sophomore Sam Rivers).
Callie is a traffic reporter for a local news station who wishes she had more of a passion for her job and life in general. Discontent deepens upon meeting Sarah, a teacher from St. Louis who has a knack for working with children. Callie admires Sarah's dedication and pure love for teaching, and they quickly develop a close friendship. But their relationship seems to reach an emotional attachment that goes beyond what society feels is normal for two women, to the point where both feel somewhat tempted to take it further.
They do, and the homophobic gay-bashing that follows tarnishes both of their lives, leaving Sarah in a coma and Callie to pick up the pieces. She is aided in her struggles by Detective Cole (sophomore Taylor Shann), who brings the story together through questions and answers; a stodgy witness named Mrs. Winsley; and a nurse who assumes that the pair are in fact lovers (both played by sophomore Megan Hammer).
"Half the play is the past, half is the future," explained Shann. "It's all about getting to the moment that's between them." Shann and Hammer's characters accent the plot as outsiders, helping Callie to realize how to best define her relationship with Sarah.
"After the whole assault [Callie] has to learn how to deal with things on her own and still be strong," Evans said.
All of the characters are realistic, because the actors have been able to borrow from people they know to create their personas. "[George] is basically a happy-go-lucky bastard," he said. "I read the script and I think 'I know this! I know who said that.'"
But Kelly cautioned that the play's essential premise is not one of lesbianism; and that anyone who wants to see the play solely to see two women getting it on should stay home (the furthest Callie and Sarah get is a peck on the lips). "Don't come expecting to see a lesbian play," she said. "It's more about whether two woman can or should be more than friends...how do we look at it?"
Stop Kiss is appropriately co-sponsored by the Women's Center, further emphasizing the delicate themes the show raises with regard to self-identity and sexuality. Such concepts, says Kelly, are "not hard to get but you need to pay attention."
"These are conversations we've all experienced," she said. "If anyone who goes to Tufts has ever had a moment they wished they lived over, this play deals with the repercussions...they're not perfect, but we see that it's okay."
'Stop Kiss' opens tonight and runs through Saturday in the Balch Arena Theater. Tickets are $5 with a Tufts ID.
