Next month marks the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder on a freezing cold American prairie. Singled out by his attackers because he was gay, the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student was tied to a split-rail fence, pistol-whipped, and left for dead. Rescued 18 hours later by a cyclist who at first mistook him for a scarecrow, he died in hospital five days later, on October 12, 1998.
In the media whirlwind that ensued, a director miles away in New York decided to bring the story to the stage. Moises Kaufman sent the members of his Tectonic Theatre Project to Laramie, Wyoming, six times during the aftermath of the killing, where – in an effort that rivalled that of the country’s top tier press – they conducted more than 200 interviews with the bewildered townspeople.
The result was The Laramie Project, one of the most performed pieces of verbatim theatre in the past decade. Eric Ng, whose Looking Glass Productions brings Laramie to our stages this fortnight, explains the play’s interest lies less in the young man and his killing than in the reaction of Laramie’s 26,000 residents to their sudden public exposure and demonisation. So, while intolerance of homosexuality in America’s backwaters is the obvious issue (it should be noted that an argument survives that the crime was robbery-driven and had nothing to do with Shepard’s sexual orientation), the focus is the small-town community.
The non-fiction script, which is played out in dramatic “moments” instead of chronologically ordered scenes, demands a handful of cast members to take on eight roles each.
Ng explains what drew him to such a grim and complex piece of theatre. “You take a look at the script and you realise you couldn’t write something like this. This has to be real and the fact that it is, and that these are people’s own words [being spoken], is the really amazing part of the show.”
Laramie’s cultural resonance isn’t about to fade. Last year, the Tectonic Theatre Project conducted a second round of interviews in the town, including one with Aaron McKinney, one of Shepard’s killers currently serving a double life sentence. The epilogue will be premiered simultaneously in theatres across the US on October 12. The murder also spurred a 10-year campaign to push the Hate Crime Preventions Act through the US Senate, which in July finally approved the legislation that extends federal hate-crime law to cover attacks based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The play represents a return to Looking Glass Productions’ roots in black box theatre, which started with Ng’s acclaimed version of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman last spring and stalled with a less able production of McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in February. If he succeeds, Ng will be another in a long line of directors to carry on the legacy of a young man whose life was cut short by bigotry.
Samantha Leese
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