September 7, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
evening'sout
Robert M. Kuhnhenn, DO
Board Certified in Family Practice
Lyndsey Lantz, left,
and Meg Kelly in Stop Kiss.
Stop, and see this play
by Anthony Glassman
Cleveland-For two years, Red Hen Productions, a feminist theater headed by the indomitable Harriet Logan, has tried to get the rights to produce a stirring, moving, emotional and troubling play.
Its two acts deal with love and hatred, much like many other plays. It examines the role violence plays in the way people live their lives.
The playwright, Diana Son, has written for the Sci-Fi channel and West Wing, teaches theater, and has won the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's Media Award for Outstanding New York Production OffBroadway.
It is Stop Kiss, and, worth the wait, it is finally here.
Red Hen board member and accomplished thespian Jan Bruml directs the tale, focusing on the story of Sara (Lyndsey Lantz) and Callie (Meg Kelly), two young women who fall in love.
The play shifts between the events leading up to their kiss and the repercussions of that kiss.
The kiss was seen by a man who then verbally and physically attacked the women, and throughout a police investigation, they are torn between confusion over their attraction to each other, desire to see justice done and discomfort with the baring of their emotions that telling the entire tale of the attack would entail.
As Detective Cole (John Lynch) discovers, the stories of the two women and others do not quite match up. Mrs. Winsley (Bernice Bolek) says that she threw a flower pot out of her window to get rid of the attacker, but she doesn't know why the women were attacked. She also can't explain how she knew some-
thing was going on while her husband slept through the night's events, or what prompted her to toss her pot after calling the police.
The women, for their part, don't feel comfortable telling the detective why they were attacked. If the man was hitting on them, why did they not just leave, Cole wants to know? How did the attack change from a proposition to an act of physical violence?
Diana Son's inspired writing and the dedication and talent of Red Hen's actors combine to breathe life into the play.
The title itself is quite clever. Son notes that it is meant to be taken more than one way, both as "Stop kissing!" with a nod towards the violence inherent in the command, and as "Stop, kiss,” as in, drop the pretentions, admit your attraction to each other and act on it, since Callie and Sara were, up to this point, apparently heterosexual women.
Son has also said that one of the driving forces behind writing the play is the distinction between how a person defines herself, and the way society defines her. The women in the play, for instance, may believe themselves to be heterosexual, but the man who attacked them obviously defines them as something other, different from himself. It is society's perception of the women that breeds the violence perpetrated against them, not their perceptions of themselves, no matter how shaken they might be after they stop and kiss. ✓
Red Hen's production of Diana Son's Stop Kiss will run from September 6 to 29 at Pilgrim UCC, 2592 W. 14th Street. Performances will be Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm, with a special discussion following Thursday performances. For reservations, call 216-661-4301 or email redhen@logan.com.
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