Boston Public Works
  • Home
  • Our Seasons
    • 2017
    • 2015 - 2016 Season >
      • Hard and Fast: a love story
      • The 5th Annual Boston One-Minute Play Festival
      • Citizens of the Empire
      • Unsafe
    • 2014 - 2015 Season >
      • Turtles
      • The One-Minute Play Festival
      • From The Deep
      • Three
  • The Playwrights
    • John Greiner-Ferris
    • Cassie M. Seinuk
    • Emily Kaye Lazzaro
    • Jess Foster
    • Kevin Mullins
    • Jim Dalglish
    • Laura Neubauer
  • Press
    • 5th Annual Boston 1MPF
    • Citizens of the Empire
    • Hard And Fast: a love story
    • Unsafe: a psychological thriller
    • For The Media
    • Our Story >
      • The Back Story
  • Work With Us
    • Benefactors
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

Getting Under The Hood Of Manhood

11/24/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureJess Foster
Hard and Fast: a love story is in an especially interesting slot, considering it follows BPW’s Three by Emily Kaye Lazarro, featuring three women. In contrast, Hard and Fast features three men. Although this play is seemingly an exploration of men relating with each other through their cars, I still insist that it’s feminist. First, this production is backed by a hard-hitting production team consisting mostly of women (and the men involved are just as concerned with women’s equality). But that’s not where the feminist journey started. 

I remember being a little girl with a trendy bowl cut and boy’s sweatpants running around my dad’s garage. I didn’t know then that I was breaking a gender code. As I got older, I started to feel it: men looking at me sideways if I tried to join their conversations about cars. If not for my plucky naivete I might have been afraid to join in the conversations at all, but luckily my ignorance was in full force. That, and my dad might be the biggest feminist of all.

Although he’s a man’s man, he never made me feel like the garage or tools were anything I was exempt from. If anything, he fed my interest as I observed him working on his ‘31 Chevy: an 11-year process that resulted in him selling it when I was away at school.

I studied the way he held tools, the way he talked to other men in the garage, the way they would all move around a garage, jockeying to be heard. I watched as he stood back from the Chevy and observed it like a painter figuring out which brush stroke was next. Because of him I can change my own oil, I can swing a mean hammer, I can ask a mechanic enough questions for him to know I can’t be taken advantage of. Because of him, I feel like this is my world too.  

The label of “feminism” implies that you explore the female gender, but in order to find that answer I found myself continually drawn to the question: What does it take to be a man?

This play is a result of my fixation with that question and with this “man’s world”. Although tough, handy men often have a bad reputation for being close-minded or uneducated, as a tomboy and later a lesbian, I have found more acceptance and equal treatment from these men than many others that I have encountered in my life. They don’t lower their expectations for me. If something is heavy, they still make me carry it. In return, they give me their respect.

Equality, like these men, can sometimes be tough. But rest assured, they also have a strong, albeit understated, ability to love, even if it is mostly directed towards their cars. This love story is for them.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Boston Public Works Theater Company

    We're a group of playwrights in Boston who have banded together to produce one play each, then we will disband.

    Get Tix to Los Meadows

    Archives

    June 2017
    April 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

Boston Public Works is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Boston Public Works must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Home page and header image courtesy of 
Boston Discovery Guide 
(c) Copyright BostonDiscoveryGuide.com
Picture
This project is made possible in part by funding from
Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation and
The Particle Foundation

Picture
Picture
You can follow our journey through The Works, Boston Public Works Newsletter. Sign up here. 
Home
Our Story
The Playwrights
News & Reviews
Collaborate
Blog
Contact BPW
Donate now