In 1998, a young gay man named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left hung on a fence to die in Laramie, Wyoming. The media descended, the crime and the public reaction came to be seen as a turning point for gay rights in some circles, and it seems to have played at least some part in the tortuous progress of hate crime legislation eventually passed under Obama a couple of years ago. Not all that long after, members of a theatre company travelled to Laramie, conducted interviews, and put together The Laramie Project, a piece of documentary theatre - its dialogue taken verbatim from those interviews - about the effect of the crime and resultant media circus on the town.
Ten years later, the play's creators returned to Laramie to explore the ramifications of those events ten years on, interviewing many of the same people and, this time, the two convicted murderers in jail; the result was The Laramie Project - 10 Years Later, presented in the same form (apparently comprised of verbatim dialogue from the interviews and extracts from the play-makers' journals), with the actors going through a range of subtle but effective costume, accent and mannerism changes to play not only the interviewers/creators but also the many members of the community who they interview.
The play explores the way that the town has tried to make sense of the events and the way they've been received and portrayed, illustrating the slippery nature of 'truth' about these kinds of things, even in a context where guilt seems to have been conclusively and uncontentiously proved in a criminal trial; it also has something to say about people generally, and the way we all come to terms with traumatic and, more generally, crucial or impactful events. The way it foregrounds its own status as a piece of theatre is effective - the constructedness is thematic and highlighted in the way the sets are used and characters donned and put aside in the ensemble round - and generally it's well conceived, put together and acted. For me, it wasn't a piece of theatre that reached any great heights - but it was worth the seeing.
(w/ Erandathie, who suggested we go having been moved by the original Project)
Ten years later, the play's creators returned to Laramie to explore the ramifications of those events ten years on, interviewing many of the same people and, this time, the two convicted murderers in jail; the result was The Laramie Project - 10 Years Later, presented in the same form (apparently comprised of verbatim dialogue from the interviews and extracts from the play-makers' journals), with the actors going through a range of subtle but effective costume, accent and mannerism changes to play not only the interviewers/creators but also the many members of the community who they interview.
The play explores the way that the town has tried to make sense of the events and the way they've been received and portrayed, illustrating the slippery nature of 'truth' about these kinds of things, even in a context where guilt seems to have been conclusively and uncontentiously proved in a criminal trial; it also has something to say about people generally, and the way we all come to terms with traumatic and, more generally, crucial or impactful events. The way it foregrounds its own status as a piece of theatre is effective - the constructedness is thematic and highlighted in the way the sets are used and characters donned and put aside in the ensemble round - and generally it's well conceived, put together and acted. For me, it wasn't a piece of theatre that reached any great heights - but it was worth the seeing.
(w/ Erandathie, who suggested we go having been moved by the original Project)
