Stage kissing is odd

I've mused on this before, but every time I have to kiss someone onstage I'm struck by what odd things it does to my headspace. It's not that it's that hard or awkward for me, I don't have a ton of hangups about it. But it requires me to make a mental shift that, while not negative, is definitely an unusual experience for me.

The character I'm playing, Gabriella, is turning out to be a real vamp. Very attention-seeking, sexy, and physical. Plus I decided that as a humorous thing I could do the stereotypical Italian thing of touching people too much and not respecting people's personal space. So obviously I end up being all over the character of Bernard, who is Gabriella's fiancé. There's some weirdness to the fact that I'm kissing somebody that in any normal, real-life context I would not be kissing. I'm in a monogamous relationship, I believe my scene partner Nick is married, so there's this little mindset shift that has to happen. "No, in most circumstances this is not something you would do, but in this special circumstance, it's the appropriate thing."

And there's a tension between in the in-character and out-of-character communication. You want to do a good job as an actor, which means you need to be appear convincing and genuine to the audience, so you need to be appear to be comfortable and into it to the degree that your character would be. It's not going to work or look good if your personal inhibitions are holding you back. But whatever enthusiasm you're supposed to be showing in character needs to be balanced, I think, with making sure you don't seem EXCESSIVELY enthusiastic about it OUT of character. Sure, it may be human to get a little kick out of getting to kiss some cute nice person you wouldn't normally get to, but you certainly don't want to make that person think you're taking inappropriate advantage or crossing boundaries. I mean, that person's there to do a job, not be sexually harassed. Bodily autonomy is really important to me, as is not making someone feel sexualized against their will. There was a moment in rehearsal yesterday where we ran a part of a scene that had a kiss written into the stage directions, and it wasn't working quite right, so we had to run it several times in a row. I went in for the kiss each time, not realizing that its placement in the action was part of the problem, until our director Bobby had to tell me to just forget about it. I was embarrassed and apologized to Nick, as I didn't want to make him feel like I was making an excuse to mack on him. I'm slightly more accustomed to a kind of stage kissing where exactly what sort of romantic business will be happening at what point is laid out really specifically before it happens. Honestly there's too much to get through in this show to move that slow about it, but the advantage of that is that you never make the mistake of approaching the kiss wrong for the situation-- too enthusiastically, not enthusiastically enough, whatever. Nick has never been anything but nice, professional, and fun to work with, so I want to show him the courtesy of being the same.

To be perfectly honest, I think I would find it difficult to get all that "into" romantic stage activity in any case. There's so many things you have to worry about while it's happening, does it look right, am I holding my body right, what's my next line, can the audience see what they're supposed to, is the timing working out, blah blah blah, that you're just entirely too distracted and detached. I hope that is helping me keep the balance properly between a convincing performance of affection onstage and making my scene partner feel sexualized out of character.