Stop Kiss, Diana Son's 1999 Obie and GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Production winner, opens at San Francisco's Brava! Feb. 10. Performances began Feb. 7 for a run through March 11. Broadway set designer (Love! Valour! Compassion!, High Society) and West Coast helmer Loy Arcenas directs.

In this comic and dark play, two young women, third grade teacher Sara and radio traffic reporter Callie are best friends about to discover something new about their relationship. Callie is sick of her inabiltity to connect with men more than through casual dating or sex, and she's beginning to realize she is a lesbian. It shocks both of them, however, when they find themselves falling in love with each other. When they succumb to their desires and share a first kiss, the act provokes a violent attack from a gay-bashing stranger, changing both of their lives forever.

Son is the author of Boy, Fishes and R.A.W ('Cause I'm a Woman). Stop Kiss, which played a well-praised run at New York's Public Theatre in Dec., 1998, was a Susan Blackburn Smith Prize finalist, received an Outer Critics Circle nomination, won the Drama League Award and has been optioned for a movie by Robert Greenwald Productions.

Michi Barall is Callie with Dena Martinez as Sara. Also in the cast are Robert Robinson, Cathleen Riddley and Louis Landman.

Stop Kiss opens Feb. 10. Tickets are $28-$22. Brava! performs at the newly refurbished Brava Theater Center at 2789 24th Street (at the former York Theatre). For reservations and information, call (415) 392 4400. Brava! is on the web at http://www.brava.org. -- By Christine Ehren