Ten years ago, the town of Laramie, Wyoming and the entire world were rocked by the brutal murder of 21 year old Matthew Shepard, beaten to death because he was gay. The Tectonic Theatre Project went into the town of Laramie to conduct interviews and try to figure out how such a thing could have happened.
Such was the subject matter of The Laramie Project, which over the course of the last ten years has become one of the most produced plays in the country. It is a play that touches on the soul of what it means to be American, what it means to live in this postmodern age, and how we are dealing with the ghosts of our past.
Now, the same company of theatre artists have gone back to Laramie, after so much time passed, to see what progress has been made, how the town has changed since the incident. They have written a new play, an epilogue— The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.
Last night, in a capacity-crowded Roda Theater at Berkeley Rep, I was one of the thousands across the world fortunate enough to witness a one night only staged reading of this new work of art. In over 150 theaters, in all 50 states and 14 countries, audiences watched a live company of ten actors, seated on stools and reading from scripts, make this marvelous epilogue come alive for the first time.
There was no set but a backdrop of Laramie similar to the image on the cover of the original play. Sometimes actors were highlighted with lighting techniques to set the mood of the play a certain way. But most of the time, the words of this play spoke for themselves. And the effect was something else entirely.
This is something entirely different from the original Laramie. It has a looser story arc, more vignettes, but more thoroughly developed characters. It follows how the town has coped with the publicity behind the murder, how some have tried to cover it up and “move on”, how others have begun to take action, and how the members of Tectonic Theatre Project worked to directly interview the two men that committed the murder in the first place. The police officer in charge of Matthew’s case, the woman who became the first openly gay member of the Wyoming legislature, and a folklorist who describes homophobia as a cultural phenomenon make for some of the standout characters.
Being an epilogue, this probably won’t catch as much fire as the original Laramie did, either. But it sure deserves to. This play is far more open-ended than its predecessor; it leaves the world open to more discussion and more questions. It asks its audience not to cry, but to think, and to act.
The thing about Laramie is that it really is like every town. It has the same characters that we see in our everyday lives, the heroes, the villains, and the common citizens alike. And it has the same problems that this entire country has, trapped between progress and tradition. By putting this slice of American life on stage, we have a chance to examine our world, our prejudices, and how we can use history to make the future brighter and better.
