My First Kiss

 I was 19 when I kissed for the first time. It was on stage during a rehearsal for a seventeenth-century farce. I played the comic servant, who predictably falls (at least in lust) for the comic female servant. Since it's a classical comedy, the script ended with many happy pairings, including ours.

"Now kiss!" my director said. 

I went for it with the good-natured actress (a senior to my freshman self). 

Mercifully, the kiss got cut. I imagine it looked like the first kiss for me.

I didn't actually kiss someone--a guy--til a year later. It was in a car. It was very hot and very clumsy. 

I was pretty bad at kissing for a long time. I think I got better gradually. 

I don't do a lot of kissing now--not that deep, urgent, lust-filled kissing. It's just not the phase of life I'm in.

All this is to say I just read a thesis about intimacy choreography in actor training programs. The author notes that intimacy coaching has become pretty regular in the bigger studio film and television productions. Stage productions have been slower to adopt such practices. 

Theatre (and likely every artistic craft) suffers from a "back in my day" stodginess. To certain theatre teachers, the whole "let's communicate carefully and precisely about what's going to happen here" process just seems like so much political correctness (or DEI wokeness). 

Back in my day, you just went at it. 

Yeah, but just speaking for myself, that didn't work so well. I mean, I think everyone involved was as sensitive and open as the era expected anyone to be. Intimacy choreography wasn't on the radar. Had I been a more experienced actor, a more experienced kisser, or--well--straight, I likely could have made a kiss work. (Indeed, by the time I was a senior, I kissed just fine through shows like Private Lives and whatnot.) And I was fine. The freshman show kiss in that rehearsal was awkward, and I was embarrassed that that was my only kiss experience. But I wasn't traumatized. (I was lucky; there are plenty of stories where things go way bad.)

Nevertheless, I definitely would have appreciated having back then what we try to make possible for actors now--someone there to give everyone permission to be honest about boundaries and comfort zones, someone who had a toolkit to balance the requirements of the production with where I was as an actor and as a person.  

I imagine when fight and combat choreography became an accepted practice, there were folk who scoffed. Back in my day, you'd just learn how to fake a slap or a hit or a wrestling match. You worked it out! Yet we all recognize the value of having someone trained in how to make interpersonal violence on stage compelling for audiences, effective for the scene, and safe for the actors. 

A worrisome quote from one anonymous acting teacher the thesis-writer quoted argued that this intimacy craze was a fad. It would fade, and we could just get back to making art. 

I fear the current political climate in the US supports that sense of Oh, thank goodness. We white straight cishet men can get back to doing the real work around here without worrying about all those others. 

I hope that's not the case. I hope other young folk get to kiss or not as they would want, even in the pretend-land of theatre.