Speed Bumps, And Other Things Jesus Wouldn’t Have Wanted, is a raw, funny, and deeply human exploration of complex themes including grief, love, and friendship. Written by Matthew Cole ’24 and directed by Ava Pallotta ’25, the one-act play portrays the process of coping with loss with a real sense of empathy and authenticity. The show was performed on Nov. 17 at the Hasty Pudding Institute.
Featuring two casts in alternating performances, Speed Bumps centers on former high school friends Ethan (Will Jevon ’27/Robbie Owen ’25) and Tori (Anna Fitzsimmons ’25/Tia KwanBock ’25), reconnecting after spending years apart in college and grappling with the loss of their mutual friend Richard (nicknamed “Brick”). Ethan is taking a break from school after a serious injury, the result of a spectacularly reckless mishap involving speed bumps that led to a car crash. Tori is dealing with her own emotional baggage while home from Columbia, with aspirations of going to law school. Their conversation uncovers long-hidden secrets and honest confessions that challenge their perceptions of each other and their past.
Cole’s script strikes a careful and effective balance between levity and pain. It’s incredibly conversational and true to life, with a stream-of-consciousness realism that allows the show to find moments of humor in the darkest of places. The contrast between the two characters is clear, but they both struggle to allow themselves to be vulnerable in the face of tragedy. Ethan, in his aggressively sexual, self-deprecating banter, confronts his hurt with crude humor and boldness. Meanwhile, Tori tries to maintain a facade of academic ambition and control while grappling with her own inner turmoil.
Speed Bumps served as Cole’s senior English thesis, and Pallotta became involved with the play after attending its initial reading. She connected deeply to the material, having lost her blockmate Luke Balstad ’25 to suicide two years ago, which made the play’s portrayal of grief particularly resonant for her.
“I felt that it was a very honest, raw, and accurate depiction of what it’s like to grieve as a young person, and I really wanted to share that with as many people on campus as possible,” Pallotta said.
Pallotta’s choice to double-cast the production is insightful in appreciating that while grief is universal, each person’s experience of it is entirely their own. She rehearsed with each pair of actors separately, and her direction and blocking for the two versions diverged slightly over the course of rehearsals. Pallotta further explained that her initial vision changed during the process. She originally envisioned one cast as more comedic and the other as more serious, but ultimately, she found that the differences between the two were more complex and nuanced.
“I landed on finding it much more authentic to just have two different portrayals that were just true to the actors, their interpretations of the characters, and the time we spent reading through lines in rehearsals, as opposed to really stringent boundaries about what was funny or what was not funny,” Pallotta said.
Speed Bumps starts with a lighter, more conversational tone, but as it progresses, it takes a more introspective and emotionally charged turn. Past betrayals are revealed, lies are unraveled, and the dialogue becomes increasingly combative. The humor is messier and more unpredictable—the kind of humor we recognize from our own lives. Assumptions that Ethan and Tori took for granted about each other and Brick start to crumble, and you can feel the tension build as it becomes unclear whether their relationship can be repaired.
Jevon noted that as he prepared to play Ethan, he spent time exploring these tougher moments and realized the character’s emotional journey was more complicated than he initially expected. “Playing the character for the first time, in a lot of the emotional scenes, you come in as an actor, and you think, ‘Okay, I’ve got to cry and I’ve got to get tears out,’” Jevon said. Over time, though, he realized that Ethan’s pain manifested in more subtle ways.
Staging the show at the Hasty Pudding gave it a personal feel, which reflected the confined, intimate space where the story takes place. Pallotta noted that “there was a very homey vibe to that space that was conducive to making audiences feel immersed in the conversation,” adding, “There is something so special about just making art in places that feel so natural.”
Beyond its exploration of personal grief, Speed Bumps gives audiences the space to engage in broader conversations about mental health in a compassionate and relatable way. Pallotta emphasized how she hoped the story would serve as a lens through which people could understand their own emotional journeys.
“I hope that by having people sit with these experiences of these two people grieving for an hour and 15 minutes, it would encourage them to not only humanize the conversation around grief, but it would allow for people to have conversations about mental health that didn’t require people to be vulnerable as individuals,” Pallota said. “So you don’t have to talk about your own experience with grief, but you can talk about how Tori and Ethan went through it.”
Lucas Cohen-d’Arbeloff ’27 (lcohendarbeloff@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.