Essential Theater: The Laramie Project at Theatre Three

By Lisa Napell Dicksteen

Originally appeared in Times Beacon Record Newspapers

Often when one attends the theater, one is hoping to be entertained or amused, to be transported out of one’s own daily life and into the gossamer and stardust of happily ever after. The Laramie Project is not that kind of theater experience.

The Laramie Project is theater as an examination of human nature. While you will be transported out of your day-to-day existence—there was not a sound in the theater throughout the opening night performance, something I have never experienced before—you are definitely not headed “over the rainbow.”

On the seventh day of October, in the year 1998, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student was discovered tied to a fencepost out in the vast freezing countryside. He had been beaten and left to die by two young men he’d met the night before in a local bar in Laramie. The callous savagery of the attack shocked the community, and then the country and the world, as the media spread information about the condition and eventual death of Matthew Shepard. As the “reason” for his death became clear, he became a touchstone for people interested in passing legislation increasing the penalty for injury and death as the result of crimes of hatred. Matthew had died for the “crime” of being gay in “cowboy country.”

The Laramie Project was conceived by Moisés Kaufman, who took the members of his Tectonic Theater Project from New York City to Laramie, Wyoming, on 10 separate trips in the year after the murder to interview the local populace. They talked with people who’d known Matt, people who’d grown up with the killers, the community’s religious leaders, shopkeepers, classmates, hospital personnel, and the last people to have seen or spoken to Matthew before he was abducted. They read every news story, watched or listened to all the medial coverage, and tried to make sense of it all. This play is the distillation of their 200-plus interviews and it gives the audience the opportunity to see what transpired in a place where “things like this just don’t happen” when something like this did in fact happen.

The ensemble cast of Steve Ayle, Toni Caracci, Lori Anne de Iulio Casdia, Sue Anne Dennehy, Kevin Dwyer, Jason Funari, Jimmy Gala, T.J. Garafolo, Jeremy Hudson, Linda May, John J. Steele Jr., and Sara Suvak, are so well integrated, so smoothly directed, so organically a unit that it is impossible to single out one performer for special attention or accolade. There are nearly 70 different characters, some on stage for mere moments, others making repeat appearances throughout the evening, so each actor has a multitude of characters to inhabit. The whole show is staged as a series of brief moments of clarity within the montage of memory, media, and emotion that make up this burningly poignant story.

My admiration for Artistic Director Jeffrey Sanzel is well known to readers of this paper, yet he has surpassed even my most laudatory accolades this time. The direction of a show which is in essence one long crowd scene must be incredibly difficult, and, according to the actors at the post-performance celebration, The Laramie Project is indeed not only emotionally draining but difficult to stage and to learn, but the audience never sees the effort, only the smoothly flowing results. It was as though there were not a dozen individuals on stage working together but rather a single organism, an octopus perhaps (but less slimy), with dozens of tentacles smoothly flexing and contracting across the stage.

By eliminating the presence of a single narrator and instead having the actors more in and out of character and hand-off to each other as the spotlight’s focus shifted, Sanzel created a fluid performance without a single seam. For example, there is a moment when May, as Reggie Fluty, the first police officer to respond to the scene, finishes speaking at one corner of the stage and turns, still in the uniform jacket she dons each time this character appears, to face the center of the stage. As she turns, she tells the audience, in her natural voice, the name of the character we’re about to hear from. As that actor begins to speak May moves further out of the spotlight, removes her jacket and melts into the crowd, allowing the audience to focus on the words of the next speaker. The scene has changed, we’re somewhere else in location, and perhaps even in time, with another character and another perspective, yet there has been no perceptible alteration, everyone who was on stage a moment ago is still there, just in another combination. The actors flow around each other like so much water effortlessly, yet inexorably, moving toward the sea.

The first sound the audience hears seems to come from a transistor radio held by one of the actors in the opening tableau. Over the next moments several more radios and televisions pop on and soon the theater is filled with a cacophony of sound as the story moves through the air waves and people begin to piece together what has happened. We meet Kaufman early on, he explains what he wants to do, and we accompany the company to Wyoming. The audience is privy to the interviews they conducted, the media coverage, the journals of the company members as they process what they see and hear and feel along the way, the confessions of the killers, the transcripts of the trial, and the comments of Shepard’s parents—all woven together to tell the story of how a “shy,” “friendly,” “funny,” “politically savvy,” popular boy with “a big smile” moved to a small town to go to college and decide what he wanted to do when he grew up, but never got the chance.

It is truly frightening to see how some of the clergy react, blaming the victim and stirring up anti-homosexual vitriol. It is truly heartening to see how some of the clergy react, hosting a prayer vigil, encouraging the interviewers to “tell it right” and make sure the world understands that a terrible crime was committed against an innocent. And it is heart-warming to see a young local girl discover her life’s work as an activist for social change in the wake of her friend’s murder, staging what became known as “angel action” in the face of the hatred being spewed by a local preacher who attended the vigils and even Shepard’s funeral shrieking about “abomination” and holding placards reading “Fags die. God laughs.”

At the end of the evening, one has been shaken rather than amused—and this is a good thing. Not all art is meant to be amusing. Not all theater is light-hearted and fun. Many playwrights intend to show audiences the scarier side of human behavior in an effort to spur reflection, catharsis, even action. This is one of those plays. While it is not for children under 13, (there is some harsh language and the violence and hatred at the heart of the play is not glossed over or played down) it is for people of all other ages.

When I informed my 14 year old son that we were going to see The Laramie Project, he said he’d just read the play in English class and that his teacher had purchased a block of tickets for the week after spring break in an effort to make sure that any students who wished to see the performance would be able to do so. I had not known he was reading the play, and thus have not had time to commend his English teacher for introducing such a powerful and important piece of literature into the curriculum.

At one point in the second act I heard my son singing along, in a barely audible whisper, as those attending Matthew Shepard’s funeral joined together softly in “Amazing Grace.” Once again, I was glad I had thought to bring tissues. Then came the extraordinarily beautiful words spoken by Shepard’s father to his son’s killer at the sentencing phase of McKinney’s trial in which he referred to “my first born son and my hero,” reminded everyone that his son was not alone out there but had the company of the night sky, the sunshine, the scent of the pines, the wind, and God, made clear that he was proud of the good that was coming out of this evil (a reference to the anti-hate crime legislation being discussed and the growth of awareness of this type of crime), and explained why the family was forgoing the death penalty, and I was weeping again.

By the time Jonas Slonaker came out to remind us that, despite all the initial hand wringing, no actual hate-crime legislation had been passed one year later, while the rest of the troupe set up a replica of the simple wooden fence on which Shepard died, and the Catholic Priest returned to remind the theater company of their moral obligation to make sure they tell the truth about what happened in Laramie, I was indignant as well as saddened. And when the company left the stage I stood up, but, for a moment, forgot to applaud. Luckily the others in the audience were able to overcome their emotions quickly enough to let the actors know how much they had appreciated their gift—as the actors returned to the stage, a standing ovation quickly rose, accompanied by thunderous applause.

This important and engrossing show will be at Theatre Three in Port Jefferson through May 6. Tickets, which are $25 Saturday nights, $20 Friday nights, and $18 for all other performances, are available at www.theatrethree.com, or at the box office (928-9100). While this show is not recommended for children under 13, it should be compulsory for everyone else.