“Nice to meet you, Kevin. Do you want me to actually kiss Kevin, or Kevin, do you mind if we kiss? You look young, I don’t want to traumatize you.”
That’s what the actress says to her director and her co-star in the opening lines in Sarah Ruhl’s 2014 play, “Stage Kiss.” Much theater centers around a kiss, certainly in the title: Kiss Me Kate; Kiss of the Spider Woman
For Valentine’s Day ,here are stage kisses dating back to 1887. They are different enough from off-stage kisses as to require guidance, judging by How To Stage Kiss (Set ground rules, pay attention to hygiene, make sure you know your lines) and Tell and Kiss: A Manual for Actors (Boundaries—to tongue or not to tongue: For me, this is an easy one: open mouth, no tongue…. Make sure your makeup won’t rub off on your partner. ..Use good sense. Be respectful. Speak up for yourself.”)

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and learn who is kissing whom and in what

Annie Scott as Rosemary Pillkington kisses Robert Morse as J. Pierrepont Finch, as Rudy Vallee as the boss looks on shocked in How to Succeed in Business without really Trying 1961

Ben Whishaw and Hugh Dancy kiss in The Pride, 2010

Ivan Hernandez and Bobby Steggert in Yank, 2010.

Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk In “Indecent,” 2017. Paula Vogel’s play tells the story of the hundred-year-old Yiddish play that featured the first Lesbian kiss on Broadway. The actors playing the troupe keep on referring to the kiss as “the rain scene.” When we finally see the rain scene, it’s not so much the kiss as the rain that overwhelms us.

Jessica Hecht and Dominic Fumusa in Stage Kiss, 2014

Unidentified show and actors

Trixie Friganza as Mrs. Waxtapper and George Beban as Pierre Souchet in The American Idea 1908

Francesca da Rimini. Act V, Scene I, 1887

Louis Gossett as Willie Nurse and Cicely Tyson as Myrna Jessup in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights 1968

Stubby Kaye as Pooch Kearney, Alice Faye as Professor Kenyon, and John Payne as Bill Johnson in Good News 1974

Donald Cook and Tallulah Bankhead in Private Lives 1948

Has there ever before been such a touching love scene between poultry? In The Year of the Rooster, by Eric Dufault, a young rooster named Odysseus Rex, played by Bobby Moreno like an angry punk with a knife, is introduced to Lucky Lady (Megan Tusing), a hen genetically engineered by McDonald’s to be twice her normal weight, and so virtually unable to stand. At first they don’t get along. He’s all…well…cocky. She behaves in a way that explains where the phrase “hen-pecked” comes from. But swiftly she is able to reach inside his chest and remove the anger he says is there, shaped like an anvil. They kiss, like the French (like birds!), cheek to cheek, and snuggle.

Elizabeth Taylor and John Cullum, Private Lives 1983

Actors Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in a publicity shot for the Broadway production of the play “Private Lives.”