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— Stop Kiss —

Dena Martinez, left, as Sara and Michi Barall as Callie.

With the award-winning play Stop Kiss opening at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco on Feb. 10, playwright Diana Son and director/set designer Loy Arcenas demonstrate how Asian Americans are successful in, and successfully integrated into, American theater.

Diana Son, who splits her time between New York at the Joseph Papp Public Theater and Los Angeles, where she is the NEA/TCG playwright-in-residence at the Mark Taper Forum, scored an enormous success two years ago with Standing New York Production, named one of the best plays of 1999 by The New York Times. Stop Kiss tells the story of Sara and Callie, two straight women in their late 20s who, as they talk about their lives, find they are falling in love. Overcoming their fears, they finally kiss. But that public expression of feeling is met with a violent reaction from a disturbed onlooker. In a telephone interview, Son talked about her work and her the arrival of her first baby, already three days overdue, which she was anxiously awaiting.

Diana Son

Asian Week: In Vincent Canby’s review of Stop Kiss for The New York Times, he complains that the nontraditional casting (Callie is white, Sara is Asian American and George, Callie’s boyfriend, is black) should create important differences about the characters and the polarized world they live in, yet these issues are never brought up. How important did you intend for race to be in the play?

Stop Kiss will run February 10-March 11, previews February 7-9 at Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th Street at York, formerly the York Theater, San Francisco. Wednesday through Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets, $24-30 through City Box Office, 415-392-4400 or at www.brava.org.

Son: When part-time reviewer Margo Jefferson, who is black, wrote a response to Vincent Canby’s review, she said that a lot of her friends were people of color, and they talked about many things other than race. There was this dialogue in The New York Times about the whole issue of color-blind casting that was initiated by my play. And what she said as the last word on it was more in line with my philosophy.

There was a time in history when everybody, because of their ethnicity or sexuality, wanted to say, “I’m gay and I’m different” or “I’m Asian American and my experience is different.” Previous generations, seeing plays like Raisin in the Sun, might first have realized that black people have their own culture. People our age understand that we all have different cultures, but most importantly we’re all included in American culture and human culture. The most important idea in Stop Kiss is about commitment, not race or sexuality.

 

AW: How does being Korean American influence your writing?

Son: I can’t really distinguish what particular influence it has. I’m sure it influences both my aesthetic and my philosophy because it’s part of who I am, but, just as in my life, I couldn’t tell you that I feel a certain way because I’m Korean American. Obviously, my experience as an American, with features that identify me as something else, does have some impact. I know what it’s like to walk down the street and have people say something about me, basically identify me. In the play, Callie and Sara are having their own private interaction when somebody in public is stopping them and saying, “I have an opinion about you, I’m going to identify you.” That’s an experience I’ve had because of my ethnicity and gender, and certainly, one I’ve had because of my perceived sexuality. One day, my husband and I were walking on the street, and because I have short hair and I had on a suede jacket and jeans, when we stopped to kiss, a guy called us “faggots.” So I can’t say that only because I am Korean American do I know what this is like; I know it from many points of view.

Loy Arcenas

Loy Arcenas, both director and set designer for the San Francisco production of Stop Kiss, directs frequently for the Ma-Yi Theatre Company in New York, as well as being resident director for New Dramatists last season, and for Brava Theater Company for the current season. He has won innumerable awards for his designs for Broadway and Off-Broadway shows in New York, including the Obie for sustained excellence of scenic design. His gentle demeanor and soft voice seem in odd contrast to such success. He t spoke at the Brava Theater on 24th Street, while workmen bustled about finishing the recent, extensive renovations.

Asian Week: I talked with Diana Son about the Canby review and her feelings about the role of race in Stop Kiss. How do you feel about the subject?

Arcenas: The play isn’t so much about race. In fact, here we mixed up the casting even more than in the original production, which has the effect of making race even less important.

Race seems to be in everyone’s agenda right now, especially among Asian Americans, because some belong to the gray area. There is really no Asian American identity; we don’t speak one language like the Latinos. The Asian experience is different for each group: the Filipinos, the Chinese, the Japanese Americans, the Vietnamese. Many of the newer generation of Asian American writers do not address race per se; it’s involved but it’s not the main theme. Stop Kiss is about two people falling in love, and that they are of the same sex is secondary. It’s really about making a commitment to something, and the main character, Callie, needs to make a decision about what she really wants in life.

 

AW: Why did you decide to direct the play and do the set design?

Arcenas: Because I’m crazy. I love challenges. I started directing in college, but stopped doing it to go into scene design. A couple of years ago, I had had enough of design, and thought I needed to do something else. It led back to directing again.

 

AW: Was there an interrelationship between your directing ideas and the stage design?

Arcenas: I treated Stop Kiss as an experiment for myself. It’s a very fluid, cinematic piece, and I wanted to do a theatrical version of that. I decided to work on the play before zeroing in on what the design was going to be. It’s very fragmented because there are a lot of flashbacks. There is a lot of repetition in different guises. There will be windows all over the place. I feel it’s about people looking into other people’s lives. I wanted the set changes to move as fast as possible, and not have things brought in and out which would destroy the rhythm of the play. Michi, the actress playing Callie, is on stage almost the entire time, and she does most of the scene changes; it’s been made as part of the characterization. No stagehands.

 

AW: Are you only interested in Asian American theater because you are Filipino?

Arcenas: I am interested in working in Asian American theater, not only because I am Asian American, but because the work is not solely about race. It is about the universal themes of disconnected people, about people desperately trying to find meaning, a need to figure out how they fit in. And if someone like myself doesn’t champion young writers, nobody will.