‘Laramie Project’ still powerful

It still stings.

Journalism came to live theater the last two weekends when students from Shoreline Community College’s Drama Department staged a hard-hitting expose of an actual event that made headlines a few years back. The expose was “The Laramie Project” by New York City-based Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Group. The event was a gay bashing.

The facts are these.

On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shephard, a young gay student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was found beaten unconscious, tied to a fence post out on the prairie outside Laramie and left for dead. Shephard was taken to a hospital where he died days afterward without ever regaining consciousness.

Meanwhile, later-convicted perpetrators Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were apprehended; the national news media got wind of what was going on; and all hell broke loose. Overnight, the little town on the prairie became a chaos of fast-talking reporters getting in the faces of reticent residents, still stunned by a local tragedy they had yet to take in.

It was into this maelstrom that Moises Kaufman and members from the Tectonic Theatre Group showed up and started interviewing townspeople and making personal journal entries with the sole aim in mind of answering two questions: how could such a thing happen in this place at this time, and what does it mean for the rest of us? “Laramie Project” is nothing more than dramatic recitations of those interviews and entries.

To this cast’s credit and the credit of director Tony Doupe, the answers to “Project’s” questions did not come out pointing fingers or preaching but rather, like points on a moral compass, with no one point indicating the direction to take.

Success with this subject on this scale is no small thing when you consider there must have been a hundred or so points of view, each represented by one of 19 actors doing multiple roles. There were gays and lesbians, rednecks, university professors and students, blue collars, white collars, turned-around collars, bible thumpers, agnostics, ranchers, farmers, bartenders, waitresses, hicks and city slickers. There were prides and prejudices. There was right wing thinking and left wing thinking and in-between thinking. There was crime and punishment and guilt and innocence. There was a lot to get out, and this cast got it out and beyond that, managed to get out an answer or two.

Of the two perpetrators, Aaron McKinney was by far the more savage, the more chilling and in no way, remorseful. Yet, even so, after his conviction and during his sentencing, Matthew Shephard’s father overcame his understandable passion for revenge and instead of giving into it, took the death penalty off the table and advocated life imprisonment. If there is anything this production calls for, it has to be an end to gay bashing and the beginning of mercy, if not forgiveness for those we do not understand.

On the other hand, if there is anything this production leaves open, it has to be the issue that arises out of gay bashing; namely, gay rights. It is easy to say bashing is an extension of rights denied; but then again, maybe they are two separate issues. Anyway, the debates go on; and SCC’s “Laramie Project” still stings.

“Laramie Project” ended last week, but for upcoming attractions at Shoreline Community College, call Artists and Lecture Series at the College at 206-546-4606.