PASSION AND PERILS OF LOVE ON THE STAGE

For actors, almost every day is Valentine’s Day. On almost every stage in town actors are kissing, caressing, falling in love. But how do they feel about doing in public what most of us do in private?

Actors need to believe in those sweet nothings they’re whispering. At the same time, they must keep the line clearly drawn between their on-stage emotions and their personal lives. They must kiss the most unlikely people convincingly, and even shed their clothes on cue. Valerie Mahaffey of the Taper’s “Romance Language” shrugs: “It’s just embarrassing generally to be an actor.” Mahaffey has fair Irish skin and blushes easily. Yet she, like most performers, manages to rise above self-consciousness when the script requires it.

Lillian Garrett, featured in the highly voyeuristic “Tamara,” admits to being “physically very shy in real life. There’s stuff that I do acting I would never dream of doing at home.”

Donald Moffat (of the Doolittle’s “The Iceman Cometh”) claims not to be abashed by the audience looking on: “I don’t think the other people matter.” For Moffat, the real challenge on stage is creating intimacy between yourself and your leading lady. Says he, “It’s something you really can’t fake.”

Others, too, insist that a love scene must be real. Rebecca Forstadt, regarding her doll-like love scene in “Leonce and Lena” at Stages, explains, “Even if it is satirized, you have to play it like you believe it--because at that moment you do believe it.”

But a stage romance is akin to a blind date. How exactly do you work up passion for a stranger? To Lorelle Brina, who as Emilia the maid gets physical with three men in “Tamara,” the trick is to “find the attractive core” in each. Leaving yourself open to the sensual appeal of your fellow actor, you can “build on the presence of the feeling that allows you to let yourself go.”

Didi Conn has no trouble conveying carnal passion for Paul Lieber in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” (Back Alley Theater): “He’s very sexy, this guy. It’s not too hard.” She worries, though, about playing opposite someone unresponsive. Veteran director Jose Quintero has reminded her, “Didi, that’s why you have an imagination.” If, in an intimate moment, an actor’s eyes are blank, just “look at his forehead and imagine the eyes you want to see.”

This once worked for Howard Shangraw (now in “Romance Language”) when performing with an actress he detested. Buoyed by the emotion within the script (“The love of the moment is what I got off on.”) he helped convince the spectators they were seeing young love in bloom. Lillian Garrett agrees that it’s the illusion of passion that counts: “What’s important is what the audience gets--not what you get out of it.”

But all that illusory passion can look mighty real to a jealous spouse. Paul Lieber was relieved to find Didi Conn’s husband, composer David Shire, “incredibly supportive” of their bedroom pas de dux . When Fay DeWitt of the Tiffany’s “Nite Club Confidential” had her first stage kiss at age 16, her leading man’s wife was in attendance. Approaching the nervous young actress later, she counseled, “You’ve got to be more passionate. Go to it!”

Geoffrey Donne (of “Kuni-Leml” at the Westwood Playhouse) has been less lucky, once having to do a bedroom scene with the fiancee of an insecure fellow cast member. Tension grew between the two men until the stage manager had to intervene. Donne’s own live-in companion, actress Lyena Strelkoff, is more tolerant of his stage romances, but pesters him to introduce his co-star. Notes Donne, “One’s lover likes to meet the other person and get a sense of safety in that.”

Didi Conn suggests that romance at home can help inspire romance on stage. Preparing for a torrid scene in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” she draws on the fact that “I love my husband very much. If I have to do any kind of homework, I’ve got someone at home to practice on!”

It works the other way too. In the Odyssey’s recent “Marie and Bruce,” Rebecca Forstadt spent 20 minutes passionately necking with a young actor. He was Italian, and “the best kisser you ever kissed in your life.” Her husband’s reaction? It rather intrigued him, she said. Forstadt, who learned a few new tricks in smooching, considers such a scene “a great way to spice up your marriage without having an affair.”

There are times when stage love scenes turn into the real thing. “Kuni-Leml’ s” Andrea Roth is cautious: “I don’t want to kiss him too believably because I don’t know how he’ll react, how I’ll react.” Valerie Mahaffey agrees that it’s all too easy to lose your heart on stage: “Actors are meant to be attractive and charismatic people; but I’m involved with somebody and I have to protect that.”

When Concetta Tomei of “Romance Language” played Queen Elizabeth opposite Kevin Kline’s Richard III, she found herself fighting off her inclinations in order to protect her stage role. Kline, she discloses, “is a grand marvel of a man--you just get swept away. But I couldn’t get swept away ‘cause I had to nail him. I could never have done on stage what I did if I had had some sort of intimate relationship with him.”

The perils of backstage romance came clear to Lillian Garrett at San Diego’s Old Globe, where she played in a Shakespearean repertory season devoted expressly to “Young Love.” The company was warned at the outset: “Be careful. It’s summer, the park is beautiful. . . .” Sure enough, within a month there wasn’t one person who’d remained vertical.” By mid-season, people weren’t on speaking terms. All this passion in the air in no way improved performances: “Our steam was all blown off stage. We were exhausted.”

The mechanics of kissing can be tricky. Nobu McCarthy (“The Sound of a Voice”) grew up in Japan, where theatrical kissing was considered “almost pornographic.” Today, kissing a Caucasian, she still braces herself for the moment when “the nose gets so big in front of my face.” And involuntary thoughts always follow: “What did I eat? I didn’t eat sushi , so that’s OK . . . . What did he eat?”

Some actors invest in breath spray, and most adhere religiously to the unwritten Equity rule: when there’s kissing, no garlic. But Bruce Davison confesses, “At times I just take a deep breath and hold my nose. Sometimes it’s like kissing a fish.”

“The Normal Heart” (Los Palmas Theater) requires a passionate kiss between Davison and Richard Dreyfuss, both emphatically heterosexual in real life. Left to their own devices, the actors were forced to confront their private taboos together. After much stalling in rehearsal, they realized “we couldn’t let each other down.” What worked for Davison was focusing on Dreyfuss’ personal qualities: “his courage, his brilliance.”

(The New York production of “The Normal Heart” starred Joel Grey, who followed his doctor’s advice and gargled with Listerine before the big kiss. Today, with AIDS rampant, some local casts are taking precautions. In Didi Conn’s last show, all agreed to restrict themselves to closed-mouth kissing. Bruce Davison, for one, approves this trend: “I think it’s more attractive, actually.”)

In “Romance Language” Valerie Mahaffey must play intimate love scenes with another woman, Concetta Tomei. Mahaffey notes that “I like Concetta, which is lucky.” And Tomei maintains, “I don’t have a problem with it because I’m Italian.” Nonetheless, rehearsing such ticklish business has led them to giggles, bad jokes and pointless anxieties. Groaned Tomei at one run-through, “Oh, no, I can’t kiss that way--I’m left-handed!”

The same play has Howard Shangraw (as the transsexual Mne. Nash), kiss two men. But, claims Shangraw, “It doesn’t bother me at all. What’s running through my mind then is that I’m a woman and I’m kissing the man I love.”

Even harder than kissing are nude love scenes. Laurie O’Brien of “The History of Fear” (Victory Theater) shies away from taking off her clothes for the sake of dramatic realism. “Make it as real as possible, as emotional as possible, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be physically accurate,” she says. But Tuck Milligan (now in the New Mayfair’s “Blue Window”) found the graphic nudity called for in “Equus” helpful to him as an actor: “The more items of clothing we removed, the more the audience dropped away. It was as if there was nobody there but us.”

In the long career of Carol Channing (“Legends” at the Ahmanson), there have been few love scenes, unless you count the moments when two good comedians “ride the laughs together.” Insists Channing, “When you’re close mentally and close in your metabolism, sensing each other’s rhythm-- that’s exciting.” George Burns has a special place in her heart for his willingness to let her shine on stage. “That’s my Valentine,” says Channing, “Somebody that can protect your laughs. To me, that’s love.”