SU Drama's LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART Begins 2/20

Playwright Terrence McNally excels at making wild and witty comedy out of very serious and thoughtful matters. In this 1991 off-Broadway triumph, two couples grapple with the mundane (burgers and kites) and the momentous (illness and infidelity) as they try (very hard) to celebrate the Fourth of July at a beach house. Lips Together, Teeth Apart includes a touch of Chekhov with the sly wickedness of McNally.

Presented by the Department of Drama in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (SU Drama), Lips Together, Teeth Apart performs February 20 through March 1 in the Storch Theater at the Syracuse Stage/Drama Complex, 820 East Genesee Street. Tickets range $17-$19 and can be purchased at http://vpa.syr.edu/drama/tickets, by phone at 315-443-3275, or in person at the Box Office, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Playwright Terrence McNally is the recipient of an Emmy Award, four Drama Desk Awards, four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He is one of very few writers to receive all honors. McNally is known for Love! Valour! Compassion!, Ragtime and Master Class, among other plays, musicals, television and film scripts.

McNally's comedic style and complex characters can be seen in all of his works including Lips Together, Teeth Apart. The play depicts two straight couples spending a weekend in a gay community, where they address their fears and discrimination against people with AIDS. When asked by an interviewer for Parade about the obstacles of writing about prejudice, McNally answered, "fortunately, there are a lot of writers, like myself, who are slowly changing people's minds by changing their hearts first" (StageView, 2015).

Lips Together, Teeth Apart premiered off-Broadway in 1991 in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the New York City Center Stage 1. The production then transferred to the Lucille Lortel Thearte in 1992. The play was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best off-Broadway Play. In the fall of 2014, Lips Together, Teeth Apart was revived at Second Stage Theatre.

The play's cast of four SU Drama students is led by director Gerardine Clark who says, "In many ways Lips Together, Teeth Apart is the most difficult play I've ever directed in the sense that by the end very little has happened but everything has changed." These subtle yet surprising changes for the characters are brought out during a weekend vacation in the beach house of one of the character's recently deceased brother, who passed away of the AIDS virus. Despite the subject matter, "the play ends on an unusually hopeful note," says Clark.