Theater in Old Louisville
Stop
Kiss
February
26th through March 2nd, 2002
Just in time for Women’s History month, the University of Louisville’s Belknap Theatre will present Stop Kiss by Diana Son, directed by Rinda Frye. A kiss is still a kiss, or is it, if the couple in question is the same sex? This heart warming comedy about the delirious impossibility of finding love at first sight despite the isolation of modern urban life shows how much we need to make meaningful connections with one another.
Two young women meet by happenstance through "a friend of a friend of a friend." Callie, the hip young New Yorker, suffers from delayed adolescence. She has an easy job and few ambitions beyond hanging out with casual friends, including an equally casual boyfriend. Sara has left a dull but comfortable life with a good job and fiance to pursue her passion for teaching after winning a fellowship to teach at risk students in the Bronx. When these opposites meet, they ignite a mutually unexpected passion that ultimately leads to the eponymous kiss; but that is quickly interrupted by a violent attack from a gaybashing stranger, which leaves Sara in a coma and Callie faced with the challenge of making her first real commitment to anything. Stop Kiss is a comedy about miscommunication and missed opportunities haunted by the spectre of homophobia, whose "whispered message is that we must hurry to embrace the possibilities in our hearts, for our lives and loves always hang by a thread." (Variety)
Stop Kiss premiered at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater in 1998 where it was extended three times, times making it the longest-running play at the Public under George C. Wolfe’s administration. It was the winner of the GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award for Outstanding New York production and playwright Diana Son was awarded a Berilla Kerr Award for Playwriting and was nominated for the John Gassner Playwriting prize. She is the recent recipient of an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Grant with the Mark Taper Forum.
Stop Kiss will be performed Tuesday through Saturday, February 26th through March 2nd in the Thrust Theatre on the corner of Floyd and Warnock Streets. Performances are at 8:00 p.m. nightly, with a Saturday matinee at 3:00. Tickets are $10 for the general public, $9 for faculty, staff, or seniors, and $7 for students. Call the Box office at 852-6814 for reservations or group ticket prices.
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