This study explores how Sarah Ruhl envisages theater as a site for the projection and simulation of our desires which can produce new potentials and realizations in Stage Kiss . A multi-layered play which has two plays-within-a-play, Ruhl’s play deals with the metatheatrical theme of the relationship between the main characters’ lives and their endeavors, as actors, to create a play with motifs of passion, marriage, and commitment. Art and life imitate each other in the play and the line between fantasy and reality is blurred when the main characters, She and He, rehearse and perform the play-within-a-play which is a parallel to their past. However, reality doesn’t implode or disappear. Rather, their simulation of assumed identities has the power to lead to all characters’ maturization so that they can embrace their quotidian life with the aesthetics of repetition. As Gilles Deleuze argues that the power of art lies in repetition which has an internal power, so Ruhl emphasizes the aesthetics of repetition which affirms new possibilities and meanings. By creating her theater as a site for audience to look into the relation of fantasy and reality, and relationship between self and other, Ruhl leads audience to think about the true meaning of love and marriage.
1. Introduction
2. The Issues of Backstage
3. Between Fantasy and Reality
4. The Aesthetics of Repetition
5. Conclusion