The story of Matthew Shepard is one of tragedy and pain that caused a nation's heartache. In much the same way that Newtown re-opened our eyes to the monster within, our country suffered when we learned of the death of Shepard, borne of pure hatred for a human being only because he was 'different,' in the town of Laramie, Wyoming.
The Toledo Rep is performing The Laramie Project with it's more recent companion piece, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, at its 10th St. space. Once again Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre hit the road, re-interviewing subjects and revisiting news reports from Laramie to find out what, if anything, has changed a decade later in the town, answering questions raised by police, lawyers and the media since the original production.
The striking similarity between the horrors of Newtown and Laramie, apart from the senseless nature of each act, is that after Shepard was brutally tortured and left to die by two men whose reason for the attack was that Matthew was gay, federal legislation providing substantial penalties for hate crimes took a full 10 years to reach the president's desk for signing; after the massacre in Newtown, federal gun control could also be years in the making due to competing legislative concerns.
The fact remains that violence against our fellow man has been a part of our culture. Young or old, guns or knives or fists, really doesn't matter — joy-riding; a mental impairment; or, as Bruce Springsteen once sang in his song Nebraska, “Well sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world,” the simple fact is that incidents — tragedies — are likely to continue, as the public becomes more and more desensitized to them.
We can remember the lives that have been lost and see our place in a society, remembering, memorializing and working to effect change. In the Shepard case, playwright Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project began to create the play The Laramie Project five weeks after Matthew's death.
Project members interviewed literally hundreds of people in Laramie, borrowed from published news reports, and quoted from personal journals to create an ambitious and moving tribute, compiling one of the most powerful pieces of theatre in the last 20 years.
The play details the reaction to Shepard's death from all angles and has since been used as a teaching tool nationwide to discuss prejudice and tolerance. As a theatre piece, it adopts a “docu-drama” style, relying on actual accounts and quoting from original sources throughout the script.
And, while there are other plays of this genre (Emily Mann's examination of the murder of San Francisco's mayor, George Moscone, and city supervisor, Harvey Milk, from interviews and court transcripts, is probably the apex of this theatrical style in the hit play Execution of Justice) few of them are as powerful as The Laramie Project.
The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later will be performed at the Toledo Repertoire Theater, 16 10th St., on Thursday, March 7 at 8pm; March 9 and 10 at 2:30pm (Laramie); March 8, 9 10 at 8pm (10 Years Later). $15 each/ $25 for both performances. For more information, call 419-243-9277 or visit www.toledorep.org.
