There is a specter haunting the American Stage: the specter of science fiction. As a genre, science fiction has had a home for years in film and TV, but it is only in the last ten years that the genre has made an appearance on the stage. Companies like Other World Theatre in Chicago, Quantum Dragon Theater in San Francisco, and Science Fiction Theatre in Boston have all formed in the last few years, specifically to produce science fiction for the American stage.

Before we go any further, let’s define science fiction. Wikpedia defines science fictions as: Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology.

It’s a broad brush. Science fiction can run the gauntlet of Frank Herbert’s interstellar Dune Saga to George Orwell’s 1984.  For a long time, science fiction was considered too lowbrow, often relegated to pulps and comics. The theatre by comparison has always been considered more highbrow and so the mixing of the two can seem to be contradictory.

So what is Science Fiction Theatre? It can be a topic of debate, but any play that takes place in the future, however near, can be classified as science fiction, and any play that deals with the ramifications of technology or a change or breakdown in society and government can be classified as science fiction.

The idea of what can be performed on stage is changing. We are seeing plays like Bella Poynton's The Aurora Project, which takes place on a space ship traveling the galaxy, or plays like Walt McGough’s Chalk about a mother and a daughter hiding in a barn during an alien invasion. Both are very different but are without question science fiction. Odds are Boston theatregoers have seen a science fiction show and haven’t even realized it. A Number by Caryl Churchill (just produced by New Repertory Theater) deals with human cloning; Flat Earth Theatre’s production of Ann Marie Healy's What Once We Felt takes place in a dystopian city, and later this year the Lyric Stage Company will produce Ann Washburn’s Mr. Burns; a Post-Electric Play.

Science fiction is never really about the future. It’s almost always about the present. It’s a way for us to talk about the fears and anxieties we have as a society.  H.G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds at the height of British Imperialism, the Cold War saw a rise in stories about a nuclear apocalypse, and we’re slowly seeing stories now about the effects of climate change. What makes theatre so different than TV or film is that it is a communal act. You go to the theatre to be with other people, to watch actors perform in front of you. As a community we can engage with these issues together. It doesn’t matter whether the play takes place in an American living room or a Martian settlement.  It’s this sense of collaboration and community that keeps me writing for and working in the theatre.

My first car was a 1994 Honda Accord. My first boyfriend was a tall redheaded Romanian who smoked too much pot and didn’t like me very much.
 
My parents could have gotten me a car, or given me one of their old ones, but they didn’t. My dad said I needed to earn my own way in the world; this was a learning experience for me. He told me he would match whatever I saved and we would buy the car together. I earned something like $1,600 at my minimum wage deli job after school and on weekends, gave it to my dad, and he bought my little Honda from one of the ladies he worked with in New York.
 
It was so beautiful, this car. It was pinkish gray with dark maroon cloth interior and a radio and a tape deck, on which I played mix tapes with Joni Mitchell and Dave Matthews Band and The Smiths and Guster (pretty much an equal mix of respectable and embarrassing artists).
 
I bought feminist and anti-war and environmentalist bumper stickers and a fuzzy steering wheel cover and a leopard-print ball that was made to sit atop the antenna. I used the car as a canvas on which to paint my identity. It was the physical manifestation of who I believed my adolescent self to be.
 
My first boyfriend was originally my best friend’s boyfriend. She wasn’t that into him and I was crazy about him and I would flirt with him on AIM while they were together. When she finally dumped him, it was all I could do to wait a few weeks before I tried to make him mine. And I did, eventually.
 
We dated for a month. Pretty much as soon as he became my boyfriend, the interest started to dissipate. We had almost nothing in common. I told him we should break up over the phone and he said, “Yeah, I was going to dump you.” He was a real charmer.
 
When I went off to college, my brother drove my car to high school and to work and to see his friends. He drove it into the ground, being a teenage boy who hadn’t saved his money to buy it or lovingly decorated it with bumper stickers and antenna balls that defined him. He broke the driver’s side door handle and never got the oil changed and when I came back from college we would fight viciously about who was allowed to use it. He had a distinct lack of appreciation for the perfection that was this little Honda.
 
When my brother went off to college, my mom sold the Honda for $500 to a nice lady who, apparently, fraternized with some unsavory types and it was confiscated in a drug bust.
 
Both my first car and my first boyfriend were things I used as mirrors. I liked the boyfriend because through him I could be pretty and cool. I liked the car because it was my carefully constructed display of values. It made me feel pretty and cool, too.

But cars and boys do not make a person pretty and cool. And also, being pretty and cool are not that important! Having a boyfriend and a car did not make me kind or smart. But I was a teenager.
 
I didn’t know that the best reflection of my true self would ultimately be a short, brown-haired software engineer and a Kia Soul with a convertible infant-to-toddler car seat, a trunk that fits groceries and a stroller, and a towel that smells like a dog’s asshole on the back seat.  Nothing pretty or cool about it, but it’s perfectly me.

Jess wrote a play for three actors, but she added two additional characters: the cars. The cars in Hard and Fast: a love story are a huge part of the story and how to represent them onstage was the major challenge for me as the scenic designer for this production. We knew right away we didn’t need or want to have realistic cars onstage; instead we wanted to create something a little more abstract and flexible. That said, we still wanted to express the specific characters of these cars to the audience. The main cars in the show, the Austin Healey 3000 and the Chevy Fleetline, have distinct front-ends that really look like facial expressions.

My research for the design led me to the work of Damian Ortega, a visual artist who takes car parts and suspends them in space to create a floating, ghostly abstraction of the vehicle. [Images attached] Since our cars needed to be able to move around the space, I designed streamlined metal frames on wheels to suspend the parts rather than hanging them from above. I pared the cars down to their essential elements—things like headlights, grille, hubcaps, etc. The design for the rest of the space developed organically around the design of the cars.

Today was load-in for Hard and Fast: a love story at--the day the designers and technical people and actors and director and don't forget the playwright all move from the rehearsal space to the production's actual venue. In this case, we're at The Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Hard and Fast: a love story is our first show of our second season, and today was like going home again because we're in the same space that we produced our first show ever, Turtles a year ago.

Hard and Fast: a love story, opens this Friday. Get your tickets by clicking on the button on the right.

See you in the theater.

I’ve been asked to write a blog post on car guys, which is a major theme in Jess Foster’s play, Hard and Fast: a love story, our upcoming production, and which I, admittedly, am not.  I don’t think I’ll ever own another car again. Now a truck, that’s different. Trucks are country songs and dogs and bottles of whiskey in the glove box. Trucks are good heaters on a winter’s night. Trucks are not caring what you throw in the bed, cause you can just hose it out when you get home. Trucks are not ever coming out of a store wondering where you parked your truck, cause you always park it in the far corner, with all the other trucks.

I’m on my second truck. Once a bright red, it’s now a faded and beat-up 1997 Ford F-150 Super Cab coming up on 200,000 miles, with a long bed and the biggest V8 Ford had at the time. It has more dents, dings, and scratches than a 50-year-old humpback has barnacles, and most of them weren’t put there by me. Assorted children, ex-wives, and wives have wrapped the bed around poles, minivans, and God knows what else. Once, my ex-wife backed her Volvo station wagon smack into its side.  Just broadsided it. What’d you do that for? I asked, though in the back of my mind I knew she had about ten good reasons for doing it. It didn’t hurt it, she said. There are three long scratches on the hood where I cleaned it off last winter with a snow shovel.

I love this truck, I once said to Jimmy Abdon, the mechanic who works on it in Quincy. I know you do, he replied, with traces of sadness and pity as he struggled to loosen a headlight frozen to the grill. You’re going to have to bury him in it, Jimmy said to my wife, who drives a hot little black Saab. Just about everything is rusted on tight or has rusted off. The spare tire damn near fell off when the bracket holding it against the gas tank rusted through. So I just slung the spare in the bed. It’s not worth stealing, so I feel safe about that. I use silver metal tape to patch up the running boards and fenders. I just keep layering it on until there’s more silver tape than there ever was original metal.

Nobody bothers you when you’re driving this old Ford. If I want to turn left I just ease through the intersection, and if I want to change lanes on the highway, I just hit the blinker and slide over. People get out of my way. Nobody behind you honks if you sit a second too long when the light turns green. I imagine people think you got a gun or something hidden under the seat somewhere. God knows what kind of outlaw would drive something that decrepit in broad daylight, they must be thinking, in plain sight of women and children. On nice days I roll down the windows and crank Gillian Welch or Mary Gauthier. Chris Knight or the Black Lillies.  John Prine.
 
You can have a lot of friends, if you want, when you drive a truck. I once saw a bumper sticker that read, Yes, this is my truck, and no, I won’t help you move. That pretty much sums up a truck guy, right there. I’ll tell you something else about truck guys: There’s a whole little secret world out there where we let each other make turns, give little nods to one other, inspect each other’s rigs. Mine may not be the prettiest, but it’s bought and paid for. It’s like seeing an old dog; they know I’m nursing this Ford along, keeping it alive as long as the engine can turn over on a cold morning, like they hope to do for theirs someday. 

In our online world, a little time and space is a good thing. It helps the digestion, both gastronomic and emotional.

I'm writing this from Paris, and right now all of my compatriots in Boston Public Works probably are still tossing and turning in their sleep. Hours ago I woke and read the email that passed back and forth last night regarding our upcoming production of Jess Foster's Hard and Fast: a love story, and gave my one or two line responses. I'm beginning to hate email as much as I do the telephone for how they both strip so much from communication and demand so much of our time, but they do have their advantages. The production is in very good hands with producer, Steve Lozier, we got a nice piece of promotion courtesy of the North Shore Music Theater, and we'll be meeting the next evening after I return to Boston.

The aftershocks of the dissolution of Huntington/BU partnership are rippling on my Facebook feed, still not as much as sports and politics and cute pictures of baby animals, but still enough to draw attention to itself. The upshot is, no one knows what it means. I have my opinion and thoughts, as I'm sure most do, but for now I'll choose to keep them to myself; it's way too early to share them, and if you don't think so, let me point you to the opening line of this post.

While sitting in a cafe the other night and drinking Bordeaux and having the two cigarettes I allow myself, I thought how happy and proud I am about what Boston Public Works is doing. I sincerely and very sentimentally wished we were all sitting together just off the Rue des Martyrs, laughing and plotting and scheming to overthrow the world, when in fact all we're doing is putting on our plays, which let me tell you, from my advantage point in the City of Lights, is a very noble thing, indeed.

The artists who came to live and work in this city fought and argued and drank, they schemed and gossiped and dreamed and so much of the time were disillusioned and despondent, but in the end, the thing that got them through was simply focusing on their art, whether it was painting or literature or sculpture, music or maybe even politics, and some became famous and others not so much so, even though, perhaps, some others should have.  The sun is rising right now on Boston. I can tell you right now it's going to be a beautiful day.

John Greiner-Ferris is a co-founder of Boston Public Works Theater Company.