Images courtesy Michael Rooney
dangerous form of intimacy is not sex but eye contact. If Buck really looks at Molly, soon he’ll stop seeing the perfect law school, the perfect job, the table set perfectly with the chairs tucked in—the pretty perfect character she performs for everyone else. Instead, what if he sees the ugly Molly she believes herself to be? What if he sees the Molly who screws up, who unintentionally but maybe subconsciously destroys everything, the Molly not worthy of love, the Molly who can’t keep pretending forever, whose ugliness has always been there but was kept hidden until the accident… What if Buck’s love is really Scott’s love, a love felt for a woman who doesn’t exist, the same heartbreak doomed to replay itself out over and over again in an inescapable cycle? Well, we changed it to a kiss. Mostly because I really wanted to make out with Alex Garrett. (Kidding. Sort of.) Partly because, as an actor, ending the play with a passionate,
Hollywood-worthy liplock is a hell of a lot of fun to play. This role was my one role at Stanford, and if I am going to get just one shot at the stage, then hell yes I am going out with fireworks. But mostly we changed it because in the script, the moment is almost too realistic. In real life, hearts break with just a word, just a touch. We keep our costumes on, recite our lines. What’s really felt is never spoken. But what needed to be communicated on the stage with this scene were the stakes of Buck’s invitation, which were not just the possibility of intimacy but also Molly’s very survival. Our struggle as actors and director was to find a way to show both, to balance the smallness and quietness of the moment with the grand terror raging inside its participants. The way the play turned out was perfect, in my mind. But part of me wishes we could have performed the scene the way it was originally written—hot kiss with Alex notwithstanding.
Leland Quarterly Winter 2011
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