‘Speed Bumps’ Preview: Double Takes on Grief, Levity, and the Authenticity of Human Connection

With two casts splitting a single script into separate interpretations, “Speed Bumps, And Other Things Jesus Wouldn’t Have Wanted” — written by Matthew W. Cole ’24 and directed by Ava K. Pallotta ’25 — generates not-quite-mirror images of a single experience of loss.

“Speed Bumps” follows Tori (Anna S. Fitzimmons ’25 and Tia A. KwanBock ’25) and Ethan (R. Will Jevon ’27 and Robbie S. Owen ’25) through ordeals of grief and friendship with injections of comedy. The one-act play will show four times at the Hasty Pudding Institute on Nov. 17, with each cast — Fitzimmons and Jevon, and KwanBock and Owen — performing twice. Audiences are invited to see one or both versions of the production, with the added perk of a free cocktail reception for those planning to see both.

This Sunday’s production of “Speed Bumps” falls close to the anniversary of the death of Luke T. Balstad ’25, who died by suicide on Nov. 14, 2022. Pallotta was blockmates with Balstad, and her experience with grief is one of the reasons she wanted to direct Cole’s play this semester.

“My time at Harvard has been very much marked by grief, and to find a text that I felt was so true to my experience grieving as a young person — I was like, ‘I would love to share this with [the] campus,’” Pallotta said. “I’ve never found the words exactly to talk about what it’s like to grieve my friend Luke, who I loved so much. So the idea of getting to make art about it feels like the next best thing.”

In fact, Pallotta double casted the show to highlight how each person experiences grief in their own unique way.

“[Tori and Ethan] both handle it quite differently, and they can never fully understand how the other person is dealing with grief,” Fitzsimmons said.

Even with the serious and raw message behind the show, the writing is quite humorous.

“One of the things that make the script, for me, quite compelling, is how much levity there is — even amidst a lot of tension between the two characters,” KwanBock said.

“I think Matthew Cole did a phenomenal job of balancing the drama-comedy aspects of the show. I think there’s points that are extremely funny, and also points that are subtly, extremely moving,” Fitzsimmons added.

Cole wrote “Speed Bumps” during a time of transition in his life, with a focus on portraying the lack of transparency in friendships in terms of “[knowing] each other.” However, he wanted to explore such friendship “through a lens of comedy and absurdity.”

“I’m interested in finding the weird, absurd, funny, awkward, scary moments in the more boring moments of our life,” Cole said.

Priya A. Allen ’27, the show’s stage manager, said that the script itself omits “super direct punctuation and stage directions,” allowing the two casts to put on variable performances with an identical script.

Besides the double casting, several other aspects of “Speed Bumps” are rarely seen in campus theater. First and foremost, the show is structured as one scene only, so it plays out in real time.

“It feels like you’re right there in the middle of someone’s conversation, but not like you’re intruding. It feels like you’re enjoying a conversation with two people the entire duration of the show,” Jevon said.

The Hasty Pudding Institute is also a less traditional venue for Harvard productions — one so unique that the cast is allowed to smoke a bong onstage — but this fits with Pallotta’s intentions to expand the accessibility of student artmaking.

“I wanted to do theater in an alternative space to help promote the idea that we could be doing shows all the time and anywhere, hopefully encouraging people to make more art,” Pallotta said.

Pallotta expects — and even hopes for — “disconnect and confusion” to permeate the conversation surrounding “Speed Bumps.” Yet for all its knotty themes and production quirks, its central themes of human connection can resonate with anyone.

“I love art that really represents and emulates universal elements of the human condition that are timeless and [that] everyone can relate to,” Fitzsimmons said. “I think ‘Speed Bumps’ is something that does that.”

“Speed Bumps, And Other Things Jesus Wouldn’t Have Wanted” runs at the Hasty Pudding Institute on Nov. 17.

—Staff writer Hailey E. Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].