By Nora Reidy
The opening scene of Stop Kiss, Diana Son’s 1998 play, is deceptively lighthearted, fooling the unsuspecting viewer with a humorous meet-cute between the two protagonists before transforming into something else entirely. Callie, a young New Yorker with a soulless job, agrees to pet sit for Sara, a friend-of-a-friend and recent arrival to the city. The women meet, exchange witty observations about New York’s cost of living, and immediately establish a playful and entertaining rapport. Suddenly, the play undergoes a jarring tonal shift: scene two jumps forward in time, opening in a hospital after a homophobic attack on Callie and Sara. The rest of the play alternates between these two timelines, with the dramatic hospital scenes complicating the more standard narrative detailing the women’s budding romance. It’s this latter, lighter timeline, though, that I ultimately found more meaningful for its gradual unveiling of the couple’s flaws. To me, the aimless Callie seemed increasingly familiar. As a fellow passive, professionally indecisive young woman, I am (somewhat counterintuitively) choosing to cast myself as Sara, Callie’s personality foil. Embodying Sara’s admirable qualities — her focused ambition, her self-assured demeanor, her decisive outlook — would be a crucial learning experience, allowing me to explore and question the same flaws that I see in myself.
Acting out Sara’s clear professional vision, and the combination of skill and dedication that she brings to her teaching position, would be both a foreign and gratifying exercise. While becoming Sara, I could engage in a fantasy professional life where passion reigns supreme over realism and financial concerns—a frightening fantasy, but an exhilarating one, nonetheless. Sara recognizes the deeply fulfilling nature of her job and feels confident in her abilities as a teacher, revealing this steadfast professional confidence in her first conversation with Callie. After learning about her career, Callie gives Sara a generic compliment — “I’m sure you’re a very good teacher” — to which Sara responds, “No you don’t know, but I am” (Son 9). This type of reaction to praise, of definitive acceptance and declaration of self-worth, is foreign to me. I would appreciate experiencing even this imitation of professional confidence through a portrayal of Sara. This confidence empowers Sara to take risks in service of her passion, evinced by her move from a private school to a more fulfilling Bronx public school position (34). Sara’s commitment to finding meaningful work leads her along an unusual but clear career path where her idealistic vision trumps any kind of status-based considerations. Her professional choices are bolstered by a certain unwavering confidence, a trait that I lack — and one that seems to be a prerequisite to chasing a professional passion. It’s something that can be learned, though, and I find myself an eager student as the prospect of a fulfilling career post-graduation seems increasingly unattainable. I yearn for the confidence that would allow me to acknowledge where my passions lie, to trust them, to pursue them.
When Callie declares her opposite professional attitude, Sara pushes her to discover what she truly wants to do with direct confrontations of Callie’s listless, apathetic mentality. These confrontations would be the most useful for me, as an actor, to portray: they would function as an inquisition of my own passivity. In one tense scene, where Sara shows up late and underdressed to attend Callie’s work awards ceremony, their differing attitudes toward decisive action come to a head. The women begin arguing about Callie’s lack of professional motivation and are interrupted by the noise of her habitually disruptive neighbors, prompting Callie to leave the apartment (46). As Callie flees two potential confrontation opportunities, Sara leaves her with a series of pointed criticisms. She calls her pathetic and retorts that Callie would rather “plan [her] life around someone else’s schedule than have to face them” — a comment on her passive attitude toward her neighbors and her general worldview (47). These kinds of disputes, instigated by the matter-of-fact Sara, ultimately catalyze Callie’s personal growth. With a committed embodiment of this character, I could keep Sara’s voice with me and carry the pointed questions of Son’s script off the page. When my non-confrontationist, hesitant, passive tendencies emerge, that voice would act to combat them. This is the true power of a role like Sara: it allows for a unique form of introspection, simultaneously a fictional confrontation and an authentic self-examination.
By the end of the play, Callie displays significant growth: she decisively acts on her feelings toward Sara with a kiss and asks her to choose a life in New York, with her, over a life in St. Louis. Callie gains enough courage to pursue this queer relationship despite the startlingly real threat of homophobic violence, no longer content with letting opportunities for joy slip by. Sara clearly had an impact on Callie; she seems to be heading in a clearer and more fulfilled direction. I can use this experience of acting self-assured, focused, and analytical toward others’ passivity to possibly assume a similar mindset shift. After all, feigning confidence is an integral part of the human experience—that fake-it-till-you-make-it cliché, the facade of confidence we all adopt in job interviews or first dates to mask deeper anxieties about our worth. Playing Sara would be an immersive exercise in doing just that. I am at a stage in my life where my hesitancy to confront myself and my genuine passions, not to mention other people, seems like more of an impediment than ever. Establishing a professional life after college requires decisiveness and a degree of bravery that I am unprepared to adopt, but the best preparation is a role like this one.
Works Cited
Son, Diana. Stop Kiss. Overlook Press, 1999.
