The Laramie Project
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| Judy and Dennis Shepard
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When 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tortured, and left
for dead by
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson on October 7, 1998, the nation
refused to turn a blind eye. Instead,
within only a matter of days, Matthew's quiet hometown of Laramie,
Wyoming, was descended upon by the media and forever changed.
In the Tectonic Theater Project's groundbreaking new play, The
Laramie Project, we witness firsthand the
psychological, emotional, and physical transformation of the town's
citizens. For the first time, we see get to see them as individuals
outside the media haze that followed Matthew's death.
Arriving in Laramie in November 1998, just one month after Matthew's
death, artistic director Mois&eactue;s
Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project (creators of
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of
Oscar Wilde), began what became a year and half's worth of work
documenting, researching, and interviewing
over 200 people from the town. The resulting Laramie Project is
one of theater's first docudramas, a play that captures, through the
voices and characters of Laramie, the days and months following
Matthew's
early and brutal death.
The play opens with eight actors -- most of whom traveled to Laramie --
portraying at least
three different characters, including themselves. Together they meld the
townspeople's monologues with
their own observations, written down in journal entries from their first
days in Laramie. One company
member recalls seeing a large "Hate is not a Laramie value" sign posted
on a corner store,
while a Laramie resident bitterly gripes, "Laramie, a town defined by an
accident." Instead of giving
us a play that concentrates solely on the death of Matthew Shepard,
The Laramie Project -- through this
interweaving of voices and perspectives -- gives us a window into a town
that has had to come to terms with
itself as a community.
Perhaps the most poignant moments in the play come from members of
Laramie's gay and lesbian community.
Matthew's friends remember that he would talk to anyone and always
forgave people when they called him "faggot" or harassed him on the
street. Then there are the lesbians
who recall holding potlucks after Matthew's death and being shocked by
the number
of gay people in town. At the same time, by the play's end, nearly one
year after Matthew's death, an older gay man bitterly
tells us, "Nothing has changed," referring to the fact that
anti-discrimination laws
against gays and lesbians have not been passed in Wyoming.
While there may not be laws on the books, The Laramie Project
shows us that there has been change in
people's hearts. Although most of Laramie's residents are Christians
and still abide by "don't judge the sinner, judge the sin," many of the
townspeople portrayed in The Laramie Project undergo
incredible personal transformations. From a straight college student who
auditions for Tony Kushner's
Angels in America and can't believe he had homophobic thoughts
the year before to the gruff sheriff
who wants to see Matthew's perpetrators "crucified" for what they have
done, most of the residents want to
prove that "the majority of the people here are good people."
The Laramie Project's mastery is that it brings to the stage what
documentary filmmakers have always
brought to the screen -- the beauty, pain, and irony of real life. In
the unflinching exactness of its representations of the everyday
citizens of Laramie, and the difficult but necessary retelling of the
brutal hate-crime that
killed Matthew Shepard, The Laramie Project serves as an unbiased
witness to a tragedy that rocked the
queer community and the nation. And although there was hardly a dry eye
in the theater by the play's end,
instead of leaving us with a sense of doom, The Laramie Project
shows us that people do change, and
horrible tragedies can reunite us and bring us hope.
The Laramie Project is currently playing at the Union Square
Theater in New York. Call 212-307-4100 for details.
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