Director’s Note

“Stand and Deliver” has been a very interesting show to develop. Magda and I have done “Read Our Lips” for the past two years (a local show inspired by the “Vagina Monologues”), and it became clear that the men needed a chance to speak about themselves, too. We have taken the organizational template of “Read Our Lips” and applied it to “Stand and Deliver.” We preserved our core values of gender diversity, raising money to support an organization that works to end violence, and the belief that everyone has something important to say and when they say it with authenticity, it becomes profound.
To that end, we assembled our cast of four men, two women and a transperson, and began the process of teasing out what each cast member had to say about penises, the condition of having a penis, and the condition of being a man. Each cast member wrote their own pieces for the show and developed them through rehearsals.
We found that refuting the stereotype was a predominant theme throughout the show. Thinking about this, I realized that a big part of the feminist project has been unpacking the definition of “what a woman is,” but our social definition of manhood has not undergone a similar process. Because of this, several of our cast felt the need to innumerate the stereotypical qualities of a man before they could move into the meat what they had to say. The word “stereotype” is actually said enough to feel repetitive. However, each of these pieces actually addresses a different aspect of the stereotype, including sexual performance, orientation, physical characteristics, and manly activities.
Additional themes that popped up included male stoicism and emotional constriction, the ways in which society sorts us into gender roles based on our anatomy, and violence against men. Just as much humor as pain came out in what we all had to say, and the show uses monologue, dialogue, puppets, poetry, and music to express the wide range of our experiences.
What most profoundly affected me about this show was learning about violence against men. Just as “Read Our Lips” donates our proceeds to a charity that works to end violence against women, we wanted to donate the proceeds of “Stand and Deliver” to a charity that works to end violence against men. Magda is a librarian, and even with her googlemancy we had trouble finding such charities. We only found one in the Nashville area, the Sexual Assault Center, who treats everyone regardless of gender. The money we raise will be especially earmarked for the part of their program that deals with men and boys.
I knew about the scandal in the Catholic Church, but that was about all I knew. Through doing this show, I learned that the well-known statistic of “1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime” is only half the story. An appalling 1 in 6 men will suffer sexual abuse before age 16. Once again, I found myself thinking that sexual abuse against women is in our social awareness because activists have spoken up about it and worked on it, but that sexual abuse against men has not received nearly the attention. Just as the gender definitions and stereotypes of women have been deconstructed more effectively than those of men, so too the issue of violence against women is more visible than that of violence against men.
This has all made me more passionate than ever about working on gender issues and equality. I firmly believe that rigid ideas about gender do violence to us all, and that we need to work to end violence against everyone. Speaking up about our own experiences, both funny and tragic, sheds light and raises awareness about gender issues, and I believe that everyone’s voice deserves to be heard.

Chelsea Loves, Director