Pillow Talk Stories

[Marketta Filipovich]

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Why such different experiences? Why were some people sharing their innermost feelings, even when they knew the relationship had not yet reached that level? What effects would these post-coital disclosures have on relationship satisfaction?

Additionally, pillow talk varied by couple type. Individuals in more committed relationships were disclosing more positive feelings to their partners after sexual activity than individuals in less committed relationships. They also regretted their disclosures less and reported more relationship satisfaction following pillow talk.

A purpose behind pillow talk

This may suggest that, for individuals in more committed relationships, pillow talk is part of the way they maintain closeness and satisfaction with their partners. I am currently investigating the possibility that post-coital communication functions as a relationship maintenance strategy by looking at why individuals engage in pillow talk.

Amanda Denes, assistant professor of communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, studies communication in interpersonal relationships. Her research has been funded by such organizations as the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

The collective internet is far from disappointed themselves; in the ONE MONTH (literally, the video came out on April 12th) since its release, Pillow Talk has garnered over 6.3 MILLION views on YouTube. Not bad for some pillow talk.

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I find myself being challenged and inspired to catch up to him. One attempted method is to press into my identity as stranger and examine misstepped moments of engagement with collaborators and material that have allowed me to gain an intimacy and understanding of the dramaturgical labor that is essential to this piece.

I begin documentation of my missteps by realizing a mistake I made at the very beginning of our process. Just after Pillowtalk was cast, Kyoung sent out a draft of a press release to collaborate on:

J: Does that give you opportunity as a playwright? Do you find the space away from projects beneficial? Do you find that it enables you to perform more textually or enhance your process in any way?

K: It has plus and minuses. Plusses are that the politics of what I write about tend to be more progressive than the mainstream. Our creative timelines allow us to start at a radical point and then, by the time we are ready to produce, be in time with the rhetoric of the mainstream.

The other plus is that it really allows us to gestate and to contemplate material and not be so emotionally erratic in later phases of the development process because we already have experiences under our belt of what the play is about.

J: One of the conversations we continue to have is how important the role of the audience is and how you continue to present your work through various stages, with the explicit intention of working towards developing dialogue and relationship with audience. I would love to talk with you more about these different phases of development and establish what those moments in time were: what you were interested in getting out of them, what you learned, and how the audience can and will follow you to our production at The Tank.

And then, when we were at LaGuardia, I think you and I both experienced this kind of failure in actually having all of this connect with conversations on race. We reached a point where we could talk about gay marriage and we could talk about ballet, but we were not having that conversation on race, you know? Race was sort of like that third leg that has always been present but never quite articulated in our conversations with people. How do we have that more successfully?

JP Moraga: Brown. Being the minority. You know, I studied musical theatre. How much of it is actually telling our stories and how much of it is actually stereotype? Where are they asking, what our truth is? I feel like you [Kyoung] really capture it.

Racism is so prevalent in our world. There is an erasure that our daily life matters, that it is important or valid to the larger context of humanity. So it is really important to have a day-in-the-life piece that is written by a brown person and features brown people and is not impacted by the white gaze.

Andrew Jordan [Costume Design]: When Kyoung asked me to be a part of the PILLOWTALK project I remember reading the script and feeling excited by ideas and themes that felt unique and largely unexplored.

One idea being an honest exploration of an interracial relationship, a marriage, between two men (Buck, an Asian man, and Sam, a black man) and the complex dynamics at play in that relationship. Another idea was the character of Buck longing to be a dancer and, just as in his personal life, he feels the absence of space in which to explore his desires.

From July 16-18, CancerCare will be at BlogHer 2015, the world's largest conference for women content creators, doing what we do best: encouraging others to talk about cancer. To learn more, visit us at Booth 2004, or join us tomorrow at 1:30 pm for a Twitterstorm, where CancerCare and our partners will be tweeting information about Pillow Talk and the importance of starting conversations about cancer: follow #CancerTalk.

CancerCare, with the support of Bayer HealthCare, is providing 25,000 free Pillow Talk Care Packages to anyone in the United States who is coping with cancer. Ordering a kit is simple: just fill out our online form. You can also visit our Comfort Pillow photo gallery to view decorated pillows that families have shared with us, or send in your own Pillow Pics to feature on our website.

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