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CFA students explore a small-town hate crime in The Laramie Project
By Jessica Ullian
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Emma Greer (CFA’07) (from left), Katy Rubin-Weinstein (CFA’07), Matt Peterson (CFA’05), and Greg Hildreth (CFA’05) each play several roles in The Laramie Project, the play that uses interviews and court transcripts to recount the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. Photo by Albert B. L’Étoile |
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The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, sent waves of shock and grief around the world, and horrified the residents of Laramie, Wyo., where the incident took place. Performing The Laramie Project, the play written in response to the murder, elicits similarly strong emotions from its actors. Re-creating the events themselves is a difficult process: the play follows the small Western town of Laramie through the anguish its residents experience following the murder, in which Shepard was badly beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. Knowing that the entire play is factual is even more affecting: every character is based on a true-life Laramie resident, and every line of dialogue comes from interviews conducted by the playwrights after Shepard’s death.
“It’s not the easiest kind of thing, to be discussing and becoming these people,” says Greg Hildreth (CFA’05), one of the nine cast members. “But it’s a powerful, powerful piece, and it speaks volumes to a lot of different audiences.”
The Laramie Project, which is being staged by CFA’s school of theatre arts and opens at the Boston University Theatre on May 4, was written by Emmy Award–winning director Moisés Kaufman and the members of the New York troupe Tectonic Theater Project after Shepard’s death in October 1998. The incident prompted an international media frenzy, and as questions arose over whether Shepard had been the victim of a robbery or a hate crime, Laramie’s residents asked how such a horrific event could have happened in their town. In the aftermath, Kaufman and a group of actors and writers spent 18 months interviewing more than 200 residents, attempting to piece together what happened the night Shepard was attacked and to chronicle the town’s recovery.
“The Laramie Project reveals the people of an American town searching for resolution after a horrible murder that has come to define them to the world,” says CFA Professor Jim Petosa, the play’s director. “The play doesn’t judge, but raises questions about the breadth of responsibility, the impact of secretiveness, and the need for change.”
The nine cast members play more than 60 roles, including the police officer who treated Shepard at the crime scene, the bartender who saw him leave the bar with his assailants, and the minister who organized public rallies calling his death a just punishment for his homosexuality. They also play the members of the Tectonic Theater Project, who faced some resistance to the project from Laramie residents and incorporated their own struggles into the final piece.
Each cast member plays several different characters, making the process an exciting challenge. “It’s more thrilling than anything, really,” says Hildreth, who plays the limousine driver who took Shepard to the bar where he met his assailants, and a middle-aged gay man who has lived in Laramie for much of his life. “I feel like I’m playing three characters: myself, and the role, and the person from Tectonic Theater also playing the role.”
“It’s almost an anti-aesthetic approach,” Petosa adds. “You don’t hide behind the illusion; you reveal the illusion and create the artistic experience right in front of people.”
Trying to maintain the play’s spirit of realism, the actors did some research about Laramie itself and the events that took place around Shepard’s death. Petosa asked them to avoid learning anything about the characters they played, and to instead create their roles by learning about the incident and the town.
“You want to approach the material as honestly and individually as you can, to not look for a road map of how to create these lives,” says Petosa, adding that finding out about the actual people makes the actors “simple imitators rather than creators. Our exploration of the text itself can be our guide.”
Although Shepard’s murder took place six years ago, the issues of homophobia and equal-opportunity legislation discussed in the play are relevant for both the cast and audience, particularly as the debate over gay marriage continues around the country. Petosa, director of the school of theatre arts, chose the play during last year’s Massachusetts constitutional convention, when, he says, the rhetoric over the issue became at times “quite violent in nature.”
“I understand when you’re dealing with a heated issue, polarity often breeds a certain kind of intensity in response,” he says. “I thought, you know, The Laramie Project might be just the thing for us to consider some of these aspects.”
But while the questions of bias and civil rights link The Laramie Project to local issues, the broader applications of the piece play a greater role in giving the actors a sense of purpose. The play examines the perspectives of so many different people, Hildreth says, that the actors get an “empowering kind of feeling” from the knowledge that their work fully and thoroughly represents what took place. The reality of it, says Petosa, serves as an important reminder of what goes on in the world by drawing an audience into an event that happened one ordinary day in Wyoming. “We live in a time where we’ve become a touch inured to the horrible possibilities that can happen in a given day,” he says. “The play has some rewards, in the sense that it keeps our human response to horror alive.”
The Laramie Project will be performed from May 4 to 8 at the BU Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8 for BU alumni, Huntington Theatre Company subscribers, senior citizens, and students. University faculty, staff, and students can receive one free ticket with BU identification at the box office on the day of the performance, based on availability. To order tickets, visit www.bostontheatrescene.com, or call 617-933-8600.
29
April 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations