 "Photo: The Phoenix/Monica Pedraja")
 "Photo: The Phoenix/Monica Pedraja")
 "Photo: The Phoenix/Monica Pedraja")
 "Photo: The Phoenix/Monica Pedraja")
 "Photo: The Phoenix/Monica Pedraja")
On Oct. 12, 1998, in Laramie, Wyo., 21-year-old Matthew Shepard died of injuries sustained at the hands of two men who beat him viciously and then left him tied to a fence.
It took him five days to die.
His crime? In the words of Loyola senior Sarah Furniss, “he was killed because of who he loved.” As a gay man, Shepard fell victim to a hate-crime.
Shepard’s murder has since become a rallying point for gay advocacy and anti-hate crime groups around the country. This has found expression perhaps most famously in Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project. The 2000 play is based on interviews by New York’s Tectonic Theater Project (where Kaufman served as artistic director), conducted in 1998-1999 with the citizens of Laramie, where Shepard attended the University of Wyoming. Eventually turned into a movie on HBO that featured such heavy-hitters as Laura Linney, Peter Fonda and Christina Ricci, The Laramie Project has become one of the most talked about and performed plays in America. It has had such an impact, in fact, that in 2008 the Tectonic Theater members decided to return to Laramie and re-interview their subjects. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later became the inspiration for that venture.
This new epilogue premiered last Monday on the 11th anniversary of Shepard’s death. Loyola students performed a reading of the epilogue in Mundelein Center and took part in a dialogue via Twitter that included the original actors, performing in Lincoln Center in New York City, and several other theaters across the world. The epilogue was not only performed at the Lincoln Center in New York, but also simultaneously in over 150 theaters in all 50 states as well as 14 countries.
The production was a joint effort between Loyola, Northwestern University and Next Theatre Group. Its cast was small: A grand total of 13 students played a multiplicity of roles. I quickly lost count as to how many characters were portrayed — suffice to say, there were many. But ambiguity was part of the point of the play. This wasn’t a regular “blocked” production where the actors are moving around communicating specific characters’ emotions. Instead, the actors perform their lines without actually moving from their seats. Likewise, the format of the play consists of individual testimonies from different people that paint a picture of Laramie as a whole. It is not about the experience of a specific person; it is about the experience of an entire town.
The production, put together over the course of three rehearsals in one month, faced several obstacles: co-productions with other universities remain rare.
“An invisible force field [had been] crossed over [through] this collective project,” Loyola’s Ann Shanahan, Ph.D., said. Shanahan co-directed the performance with former producing director of About Face Theater Heather Schmucker and managing director of Next Theatre Kevin Heckman, both of Chicago. Shanahan also expressed enthusiasm about the challenge of working with other theatrical groups and spoke positively about the creative energy that was generated during the limited rehearsal time.
Other difficulties were not so easily surmounted, though the group might have taken comfort knowing that they shared the same burden with other groups putting on Ten Years Later. While every play has its villains, those portrayed in the project were real people who actually committed the murder of an innocent man.
One of the perpetrators, Russell Henderson, has since expressed remorse for his part in the murder. However, Aaron McKinney (played by Loyola senior Patrick Murphy) has not — he infamously invoked the “gay panic defense,” claiming at his trial that Shepard’s alleged sexual advances drove him into temporary insanity. In one interview, he told Tectonic Theater member Greg Pierotti (Loyola senior Ozzie Totten) that since his incarceration he had begun to read books about Nazis and other related groups. Obviously these unsympathetic characters are difficult to portray fairly. Nevertheless, the view of The Laramie Project and its epilogue is that everyone, no matter what their views, should be allowed to speak. “Everyone is a person with a truth to show,” said Northwestern’s Reed Wilson, who portrays Henderson, as well as other characters. It may not be the truth that others like to hear or agree with, but it is that person’s own personal truth.
For example, Westboro Baptist Church, the creation of religious leader Fred Phelps and the subject of the 2007 BBC documentary The Most Hated Family in America, picketed several productions of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. Yet as Wilson pointed out, “Westboro is also part of our country.”
After the two-hour production finished, all of the participating theaters tuned into a live Twitter feed from the Lincoln Center to watch and contribute to a dialogue extending throughout the world. Though all of the Tectonic Theater group members proved themselves articulate and genuinely passionate about the project, the most sympathetic person in the Lincoln Center proved to be without a doubt Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother. A small woman with a strong Midwest accent, Shepard looks like a mom you might see picking up her kids after a soccer practice. Visibly teary-eyed, she described the transformative power of The Laramie Project on those she has met and called Laramie a “microcosm of the world [that is] no further behind or ahead than the rest [of the world].”
That really is the message of The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. Although the crime recounted took place in a small town in Wyoming, the play continues to have universal impact. The National Equality March in Washington D.C. on Oct. 11 and Obama’s promise to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are a case in point.
The students performing Monday night were part of a national movement and are therefore included (although not by name) in the recent House of Representative Resolution 777, which “honor[s] all those participating in the production of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later in remembrance of Matthew Shepard.” Or, in Judy Shepard’s own words: “The real work starts when you come home ... ”
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