The Laramie Project
Presented by Actors Bridge Ensemble
July 19-21 and 25-28 at the Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Ave.
For ticket info, call 341-0300
On Oct. 6, 1998, University of Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard met two men in a bar in Laramie, Wyo. Shepard, who was gay, was offered a ride home. In the light of the next day, a passerby found Shepard unconscious, severely beaten and left for dead off a rural road. Shepard languished in critical condition for nearly a week, during which time the national press descended on the town. When he died on Oct. 12, 1998, the crime became a murder case. Longtime Laramie residents Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested and linked to Shepard’s death by way of overwhelming evidence. With that, Laramie became a latter-day symbol of violence and a rallying cry in the movement to address the rise in hate crime.
The Shepard case spawned unprecedented media coverage and, eventually, a network television docudrama. But the most well-known piece of art to emerge from these events is The Laramie Project, a multimedia play conceived by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project of New York City. In the aftermath of Shepard’s murder, Kaufman and his troupe arrived in Laramie to record more than 400 hours of interviews with the town’s citizens. Based on the actual words from the transcripts, The Laramie Project was presented in New York on May 18, 2000, to critical acclaim.
HBO produced an all-star version of The Laramie Project, which aired this past March. But Nashville gets it first look at the original stage version when Actors Bridge Ensemble opens it July 19 for a two-weekend run at the Darkhorse Theater.
“This is a play we had to do,” says Bill Feehely, Actors Bridge artistic director, who will direct and act in the production. “It fits our mission so well, and it’s truly an actor-driven piece.” ABE company member Vali Forrister had seen the play in Denver and brought it to Feehely’s attention. He subsequently saw the New York production.
Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project is known for its strong ensemble approach to historical events, case in point being the highly regarded Gross Indecency, which dramatically brought to life the legal trials of Oscar Wilde. “This play is also true to the Tectonic perspective,” says Feehely. “There are no scenes...only moments. There are constant time shifts. It offers a montage approach to theater, as opposed to a linear one.”
In other words, Nashville theatergoers expecting the pulse of a true-crime drama will confront something slightly different. To wit, the character of Matthew Shepard, a slight, unassuming and troubled young man, never even appears.
“It’s not really a play about Matthew Shepard,” says Feehely, “so much as it’s a play about a community and how events affected that community. Laramie has been called an Our Town for our time. It offers considerations of life, family, nation and the world, but these all don’t intersect until events make us question them.”
The play also forces considerations of the ugly reality of hate crime. Randy Cox is chair of Equality Tennessee, an all-volunteer educational resource that promotes “the elimination of prejudice and discrimination and the defense of human and civil rights” of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons. “We’re only 2 years old, so we are still fairly new at collecting state data,” Cox says. “We see maybe a couple of incidents per month of hate crime or discrimination. We have found that people are hesitant to come forward, usually because of publicity. But we feel there’s a lot more going on than is reported.”
Complacency can be a problem, Cox asserts, “because gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are more visible [now]. But injustices still occur frequently, and there are still few protections, for example, in the areas of housing and employment. The only tangible protection in place against hate crimes exists with judges, who can increase a sentence if they believe a hate crime has taken place.”
Inevitably, then, Laramie serves not only as stirring drama, but as issue-oriented lightning rod. “It asks questions,” says Feehely. “Were the seeds of hate existing in Laramie for some time? Was there an atmosphere of homophobia? Was the Shepard murder an isolated event?”
On a spare set, and with some video enhancement, Feehely will gather an interesting mix of local performers, as the 10-member ensemble tackles 64 different characters. Besides Feehely and other Actors Bridge regulars Forrister, Jeff Lewis, Rachel Agee, Amy Chomsky, Don Griffiths and Tara Lacey, the cast features the highly respected Henry Haggard and newcomers Colleen Egan and Matt Gerbig.
“Finally,” says Feehely, “the play is about how this event affected the community in which it happened, as well as the artists who investigated it.”
Abby Rubenfeld is a Nashville attorney and activist who has specialized in discrimination cases. She also serves on the board of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay civil rights organization in the world. “The Laramie Project has raised awareness,” she says. “It’s educated people and brought new levels of understanding toward bias crimes in general. Education is the key to change on an issue like this.”
In a Nashville summer that has been lacking meaty theatrical fare, The Laramie Project steps forward to fill the void.
