I remember when I first learned about the power of kissing.
We were rehearsing for our small high school’s production of "Pride and Prejudice." I was double cast as the lead, which meant I would play Elizabeth for two shows and a different girl would play Elizabeth for the other two nights. This was a horrible and awkward setup for many reasons, 78 percent of which are immediately apparently within the first five seconds of pondering such a notion. But we were young teenagers who didn’t have any other ideas about how to force people to sit and look at us for an hour and a half, so we went with it.
Tensions ran high as we struggled to memorize the complicated lines and blocking. I have no idea what the professional standpoint on the Jon Jory adaptation of this script is, but our cast and director found it atrocious. He intended for characters to fly in from the ceiling and float in and out of scenes in puffy clouds, saying classic Austen lines like, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Boys, marriage, love—giggle, giggle, wee!
A serious question threatened the integrity of our low budget, low stakes, yet at the time, seemingly crucial high school production: Would the audience stay awake?
Our young director thought that the answer to this question was a definitive no. Solution? Make the play more exciting. Have the characters kiss.
Lovers in the Regency period hardly even touched; kissing was unimaginable. In "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightley, there’s a scene where Darcy touches Elizabeth’s hand to help her into a carriage.
That was a huge and risky artistic moment because their hands touched.
In our play, we didn’t just have one final kiss scene to relieve the sexual tension. We had a raging storm of kissing, pouring down on the dry desert of proper behavior. A flood of kissing gushing out from a broken dam of chastity. A herd of stampeding, kissing rhinoceroses.
Jane and Bingley’s proposal scene? Kiss. Wickham acting like a deceptive snot to Elizabeth? Kiss (on the hand). Mr. and Mrs. Bennet interacting at all? Kiss. Wickham and Lydia running off together? A piggyback ride followed by a kiss. Darcy and Elizabeth fighting, making up, and ultimately falling in love? Kiss, kiss, kiss.
Here we were, 20 mildly invested teenagers who were only doing theater because it was a small enough town where we could, changing history, making some of the most beloved characters from one of the most iconic romantic histories of all time mack out with each other. Kissing. It's powerful stuff.
