The Laramie Project is an incredible demonstration of the power of art the collection of moments that made up the play were carefully curated to provoke the audience, whether that was when sophomore Ben Leach as the Baptist Minister eerily said he hoped Matthew had time to regret his gay lifestyle before slipping into a coma, or when sophomore Ritika Kommareddi as Zubaida Ula argued that we have to own that it is “that kind of town” and that this is the kind of country where hateful things can and do happen.
You want to prick people with something that’s going to then make them go out into the world and make them have empathy, have love.” “Everyone is going to come out differently,” she said. The Laramie Project is a true story after all, and true stories rarely boil down to some simple conclusion - it’s their complexity that makes them true. I think of it as an examination of hate and love.”Īltherr makes a good point. When I asked senior Isabella Altherr, who played Marge among others, what she thought the take-home message was, she said, “I don’t think there is one necessarily. But to no avail, I found myself wandering in a murky haze of pieces of wisdom. I had this feeling while watching the play that I was being gently coaxed towards some kind of epiphany - some ultimate moral-of-the-story I was supposed to deduce through the culmination of each interview. do justice to this person because this is an actual person,” he said. Enam noted that Shapiro often reminded the cast of this. After all, they were acting with the profound idea that this is someone’s story and these are someone’s words. The cast was not only charged with the task of distinguishing five (sometimes six) different personas, but were also asked to consider the implications of playing real people. This play was certainly a feat for the actors too. The faultless execution of this dance speaks to the excellent stage managing team headed by senior Tori Lyons and the costume design team headed by junior Allison Cuesta and senior Kaley Sten. The play seemed to be one long choreographed dance the actors moving around the stage, passing off the spotlight and quietly making clever costume changes that differentiated the 60-plus characters the cast of 12 had to play. So how do we invite the audience to use their imagination to complete the story?” he said. It’s all about these characters who are real people. “The play is described by the original writers as an actor driven event.
Shapiro commented on the noticeable lack of sets and props in the play. When members of the cast were not speaking, they could be seen sitting on the only (with the exception of a few umbrellas and candles) props for the evening: 12 wooden chairs spaced around the stage. The play opens with all 12 cast members on stage and, for the most part, keeps them on stage for the rest of it. Since these moments were originally unscripted, there is a real and raw honesty to the nature of the dialogue. The play skillfully does this as true opinions bleed through the interviews in fragmented Freudian-slip-like moments of clarity. He had been kidnapped and beaten in what was deemed a hate crime against his sexuality.Įven though Matthew’s murder is a crucial part of the play, The Laramie Project seems to be more interested in examining the aftermath - the anger, pain and healing of the town - rather than the event itself. Matthew Shepard was 21 when he was found tied to a fence in critical condition. Like junior Usman Enam, in the role of Greg Pierotti said, “Good people. Within minutes of the opening lines, you get a clear image of that quintessential American small town. These mere moments piece together a surprisingly holistic picture of the community. It has these moments to show how everyone’s lives are touched by this incident and how each of their lives intersect,” he said. New York-based director Noam Shapiro commented on the structure of the play in an interview with The News-Letter after the show. The script is written entirely from interviews that the original cast conducted with the residents of Laramie, making the play feel more like a collection of moments than a scene by scene play. The Laramie Project, written by Moisés Kaufman, follows the aftermath of the murder that brought hate-crime laws (or lack thereof) to headlines across America in 1998. This fall, the Barnstormers are celebrating their 100th anniversary with a production of The Laramie Project, the true story of the 1998 hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo.
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