Men testing testosterone

by Eva Dameron

Daily Lobo

It's time for men to pour their hearts out on stage.

"Four Wheel Drive (One or Two Things About Testosterone)" is a show written by local playwright Joe Sackett.

Sackett said the play is idea-driven instead of plot-driven.

"It's a play of ideas," he said. "I have a feeling that if a man and a woman see this play together, and they go out for a drink afterwards, they're going to have a lot to talk about."

Paul Ford, who has worked successfully with Sackett in the past, directed the play.

"It's about men trying to figure out how they use societal markers to identify their appropriate roles in society," Ford said. "How they are supposed to be in relationships, how they are supposed to serve as some sort of model for what masculinity is about."

He said the play is made up of about 25 different pieces, which include satire, monologues and two fragmented story lines that run throughout the show, tying everything together.

"Those are intercut with other pieces that are stylistically similar but not part of the same story line," Ford said. "For example, there will be a number of monologues that address relationship with fathers, the impact of the presence or absence of a father or the personality of the father on the life of both men and women today."

Ford said the idea of the man's role has been changing steadily since the '50s. The show covers the changes over the last five decades.

"In the '50s, you have business, attend to work, nuclear family," Ford said. "In the '60s, you have the model of Hugh Hefner going in one direction and the hippies going in another direction."

He said the '70s were an extension of the sexual revolution, until we arrived at AIDS in the '80s, a decade defined in terms of acquiring power through money.

But the play doesn't say this is exclusively a male consideration, he said. Everyone is struggling to pinpoint his or her role in society.

"Everything's scrambled and crazy for everybody today," Ford said. "The play looks at how men are doing it. But certainly women are doing it, everybody is doing it, and in the new millennium there are all kinds of new societal models and rules and fears that are pushing everybody in different directions."

While he likes being a man, Sackett said, the actions of males have a lot of impact on society, like war.

"I'm not trying to put men down in any way," Sackett said. "I'm trying to look honestly at the issues. Women don't rape, for instance. Men do."

He said he did quite a bit of research to write the play. He studied pop psychology, the roots of aggression and violence, and the male's relationship with his primate cousins.

"How have we evolved as a species and what role has violence had to play in that?" he said.

Krist°n Hansen plays a football coach who's passionate about sports and her team doing well.

"It's about the role that testosterone plays in our society regarding aggression and competition," she said. "Women have testosterone just as men do, and over the years women have become more fierce in their sense of aggression and competition."

She said this play serves as a friendly reminder that it's easy to get carried away by our primal instincts.