KISS

KISS by GUILLERMO CALDERÓN. Wilma Theatre. 2023

KISS is about a group of American actors that perform a Syrian soap opera that they discovered online, only to then have their entire world-view shattered when they have a talkback with the playwright.

The first section of the show is essentially the production that the American actors are producing. In early conversations with the director, we felt that it would be incredibly helpful to lean in to the soap opera style of underscoring and heightened music. I wanted to make sure that we were really shaping the sonic experience of this first section of the play in a way that really set the audience up for laughter. Without spoiling the plot too much, the end of the play is an extreme contrast in tone from the start. The final sequence of the play puts us in the middle of a Syrian apartment in ruins while we hear the sounds of war off in the distance. It was important to me that we plant the seeds for this early, sonically that is, but still allow the sudden shift to surprise the audience. For me, that meant the textures and drones for the end of the show needed to come from the content and music I wrote for the start of the show.

For the first section of the show, I wrote a piece of music that plays like a love theme throughout. Ahmed pulls out a microphone while the beat drops and plays underneath him. For the end of the show, I took this beat drop and distorted it into the sounds of bombs in the distance.

Kiss. Wilma Theatre. 2023
Direction: Fadi Skeiker
Scenic Design: Jian Jung
Lighting Design: Reza Behjat
Costume Design: Levonne Lindsay
Projection Design: Alan Price
Sound Design and Original Music: Damien Figueras