Monologue Monday: Callie & Sara in Stop Kiss by Diana Son

Hello everyone!!! This week we bring you a rather interesting play entitled Stop Kiss by American playwright Diana Son. I’ve lifted the plot from the WIkipedia page:

“Sara and Callie are walking through New York City’s West Village very late at night, when they share their first kiss. This leads to a vicious attack by an angry bystander, in which Sara is horribly injured. She falls into a coma, which becomes one of the major subjects of the play. George, Callie’s good friend, tries to help with the situation, but there is little he can do. Peter, Sara’s ex-boyfriend from St. Louis, comes to help nurse her back to health. Throughout Stop Kiss, relationships are explored, formed, and even ended. Diana Son elaborates on the depths of human emotion and compassion in this play.

The story is told out of chronological order: alternating scenes take place respectively before and after the assault, which is not shown onstage.”

There’s a lot of posters for this play. This one from Alaska is rather literal.

Despite having premiered more than two decades ago, the play’s themes resonate even today. For example, a lesbian couple were attacked in London last month, the bizarre irony being they were attacked after being taunted to kiss, whereas in Son’s play the couple are attacked after their first kiss.

Not so literal from Minnesota. Funnily enough, another playwright we profiled spent time on this campus.

For trivia’s sake, the original cast featured Jessica Hecht (who has appeared in all sorts of TV shows and plays, from Friends to Breaking Bad to Julius Caesar) and Sandra Oh (who was in Grey’s Anatomy forever and is now on Killing Eve). Both Hecht and Oh appeared in the film Sideways.

Via here.

When literal met figurative in Tübingen.

Son’s career has done very well, especially in television where she’s written for and/or produced episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Blue Bloods and 13  Reasons Why.

They’ve finished building that building….

Stop Kiss has a few monologues. Let’s see what we can find…the first one is Callie updating Sara on everything after the attack. You can find the monologue here.

A

 

B

 

C

I have to go to this thing…

Here’s a monologue cut from lines from the play. Callie sounds…controlling a bit???

From here.

 

It was humiliating…

I couldn’t find this monologue in the play, but basically it’s Callie whining about her job.

 

Because we were kissing…

Callie details what happened during the attack. The monologue is available here.

A

 

B

C

 

I do, I know. I sometimes…swerve

Here, Callie reminisces about her parents making her take tennis lessons. This is very relatable for me because my parents did the same damn thing. Hated every minute of hitting that stupid ball back and forth. Seriously, tennis has no purpose.

Here’s the monologue:

Courtesy here.

You know, Sara and I used to stand at the door…

From here.

So, listen. Every day…

Sara finally gets a monologue!!! This monologue has been cut from the following bit of dialogue:

Available here.

A

Let’s uh…let’s go somewhere…

This is unusual because the actor has chosen to simply film herself only whilst in the midst of a dialogue. Here is the sample she uses:

LOVE the handwritten notes on this. From here.

 

And here is an interview with our glorious playwright, Diana Son:

 

Finally, here’s a jazz-ish band from Tübingen, Germany that played music during the play’s run there and this is a song they did!!!

 

Join us next Monday for yet another adventure in monologues!!!