Commentary and review of the plays The Laramie Project, The Laramie Project Ten Years Later, and the film The Laramie Project.
“Some things, only artists can do. Some things, only artists can do. And it’s our job.” Toni Morrison
I didn’t want to read The Laramie Project. I had put it off for years. Why revisit something that was so horrible, that makes me sad and uncomfortable, I thought. And besides, I rationalized, I’m up to date on LGBTQ+ politics. I’ve taken the teacher trainings.Like everyone (whether we know it or not) I have good friends and family who are gay. I changed my profile photo on social media to the rainbow background when the Supreme Court made its ruling. I felt horrible when Matthew Shepherd was killed, but what good would it do to revisit the images of him tied to the fence, brutally beaten, or him lying in a coma as his parents kept vigil?
I did read The Laramie Project, though, when work required it. It is on the reading list for a modern theater class I teach, and a writing coach client I work with modeled his play after it, so I had no choice. From the first page, I was engrossed. Beyond Moises Kaufman’s groundbreaking use of “the moment” instead of the “scene”, beyond the excellence of the script itself, I was riveted as if I were a voyeur to the retelling of the events in 1998-1999. Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project descended on Laramie in the height of the controversy and stayed for months conducting interviews with citizens. I quickly realized that The Laramie Project is not a retelling of the murder of Matthew Shepherd as much as it is an anatomy of a town caught in global headlights at a private, shameful moment. I squirmed right along with them. Beneath the events that drive the plot, the play is about humanity’s capacity to rationalize, to ignore evil, and at isolated, heroic moments, to stand up to it.
I didn’t want to read The Laramie Project Ten Years later, either. But, it’s part of the publication my students will study in Modern Theatre, so I took a deep breath and turned the page. The play is briefer than The Laramie Project, structured in two acts rather than three. Moises Kaufman returns to Laramie a decade after Shepherd’s murder. Several of the writers/actors who accompanied him ten years earlier come along as well. Two of them, Stephen Belber and Gregory Pierotti, go to prisons to interview Shepherd’s murderers, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. In Laramie they are surprised to receive a much cooler reception than they had a decade earlier, in the immediate trauma of Shepherd’s death, the town’s reaction, and the town’s changing identity. Now Kaufman and company are told to just “let it go”. The town has moved on, they are told. In fact, though, many people in the town had not moved on but rather rewritten history, playing loose with the facts. The reinvented history blames drugs (drugs that were not in fact ingested) rather than homophobia and hate. The Laramie Project Ten Years Later is not so much about Laramie but about our capacity as humans to deliberately turn from truth out of our desire for emotional comfort. This is, of course, something we all do in one way or another.
Continuing my pattern of denial, I didn’t want to watch the film The Laramie Project, either. It seemed a good idea to order it from Netflix when I began to read the plays. But certainly, I reckoned, I’d made myself uncomfortable enough. Still, I thought of my client and his play, and realized how helpful it would be to see the characters in physical form, and in particular, to study the pacing and see Kaufman’s “moments” in action. Just as I began watching, my husband walked through the living room to retrieve something. He was busy working outside. I’d been telling him about both plays, and news junkie that he is, he remembers a good deal about Shepherd’s murder and the aftermath in Laramie. Instead of retrieving whatever he was after, he sat down. Just for a moment, he said. But an hour and half later he was still there, on the edge of his seat as I was. The film follows the original play, but is in fact a film, not a filming of the theatrical event. The all-star cast (Peter Fonda, Janeane Garafolo, and the guy with the crazy eyes from Deeds, among others) brings Kaufman’s script vividly to life. The documentary style seems stark at first, but ends up enveloping the viewers while leaving them plenty of space to watch with disdain and sadness as the events unfold.
I’m ready to put my book back on the current project shelf on my desk, now. I’m packaging up the film in the red return envelope. I fought hard, but I’m grateful I lost. Kaufman’s trilogy of sorts is not about Matthew Shepherd or Laramie, Wyoming as much as it about humanity’s capacity to hate, to retreat from justice into cowardice, and to willingly turn from truth. The story is about all of us at our worst. It’s a mirror that we desperately need from time to time, no matter how good our intentions are.
Thanks for this, Carolyn. I’ll definitely watch the Netflix movie.
Great to hear from you, Peggy! Let me know what you think.
Thank you for another compelling and well written essay Carolyn. I have the same problem with avoiding things that make me sad, depressed, or uncomfortable. My excuse is that life is difficult enough without looking for things that upset me. I think maybe we can’t afford to take that stand. Looking around at our current political and cultural climate I see rampant misogyny, homophobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, and just plain hatred. It’s interesting that many of these words contain the Greek word phovia. This does not mean hatred or aversion to. It means fear. (Well, except for misogyny. In Greek that literally means hatred of women. I guess we don’t need to be feared. We can be hated freely.) Generally though, we hate what we fear and we fear what we don’t understand. Turning away from what we don’t want to see is exactly what we should not do. That’s not how to make things change, and obviously things haven’t changed. This is a good reminder of that.
Thanks, Steph. That is interesting about the Greek origin. Every generation has its new thing to fear and sometimes hate, I think. One of my most potent memories of high school was walking down Mill Street in Grass Valley with you. Do you remember the two African-American gentlemen, in suits and ties, who were verbally accosted by the young men in flannel shirts who erupted from Jimboy’s Tacos? Today those who are transgender are accosted, mostly because people don’t understand the difference between sex and gender. I didn’t either, at first. Education is key to eliminating these phobias. I wonder what group in our society’s future will next be maligned. I think at the heart this is society’s refusal to heal, which is something we talk about in my English classes.
Absolutely I remember that incident. It’s seared into my brain. It seems like each new generation has to learn the same lessons over and over. The particulars may change, but the principles are the same. Education and healing are key, it’s true. In my opinion collective guilt is a highly underrated way of helping to make sure that the lessons stick. As a culture though, we resist this because it gets in the way of individualism. I’m a first generation American on one side, and of German descent. Throughout my life I have sometimes felt acutely ashamed of the history of the Holocaust. It’s not personal shame, but a general shame at what supposedly normal people are capable of, and I think that’s a good thing. Maybe shame is the wrong word. Maybe consciousness is better, or sensitivity. Anyway, this is an interesting discussion you started!
Another great post; I echo previous comments about sharing the same hesitation to go deeply into such painful subjects – but also agree that we cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand, especially when lives and well-being are at stake! I think almost everyone can relate to feeling like an outcast for one reason or another; the hard thing is translating that into feeling empathy for someone else, for an issue that may be completely foreign to us – often because we fear change. Common wisdom says that it just takes an intimate encounter with another person to start changing people’s minds – I think that’s so often true. Thanks for delving deeply and encouraging dialogue!
Thanks Irene. I fought through some resistance to write this as well, which was an interesting part of the process. That Toni Morrison quote always helps me pull through. You are so right about the transformative intimate encounter. Many people, including Louis C.K. and Maysoon Zayid, blame the Internet for our society’s increasing meanness. It’s easier to bully and hate sitting in front of a screen rather than looking another human being in the eye. I remember taking a five day singing workshop and having to sing to strangers while looking at them, not ever looking away. It made all of us cry. That would be the easiest way to world peace and universal love. Maybe there is a story there!