Creating Dialogue with The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theatre Project had its premiere at the Denver Center Theatre Company on February 19th, 2000 and transferred to Off-Broadway at the Union Square Theatre on May 18th, 2000. Through interviews with the citizens of the town of Laramie, Wyoming, Kaufman and the team created this show to learn what happened to Matthew Shepard on the night that he died. Throughout the show, it is revealed that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson had given Matthew, a gay man, a ride home from Fireside Bar. After Shepard, allegedly, put a hand on McKinney’s thigh, the two boys beat Shepard and left him tied to a fence for over 18 hours. He was found in critical condition, taken to the hospital and would die from his injuries six days later. This event made national news and flooded the small town with media attention.

This show is a docu-drama, and while not the first of its kind, it is the most well-known. When the play was in the process of being written, the question of “Is theatre a medium that can contribute to the national dialogue on current events?” was posed. As has been established, it can be, and The Laramie Project is a perfect example of how theatre can create these types of discussions. As Jill Dolan states in “The Laramie Project: Rehearsing for the Example”, The Laramie Project uses “performance as a forum for rehearsing the practice of politics”(pg 113). It does this in a variety of ways, which is most clearly seen by comparing it to Theatre of the Oppressed. “Empathy and moral education, Theatre of the Oppressed, and The Laramie Project” by Andrew Corsa points out how The Laramie Project works similarly to how Theatre of the Oppressed, specifically Forum Theatre, operates. There is no overarching dramatic plot, so there is no climax or resolution. Instead, the real stories of a real problem are played out onstage. The audience knows that this is a depiction, in Forum Theatre, this is because they are describing the problems that participants are facing, and in The Laramie Project, it is due to the stripped-down nature of the technical elements and the fact that they tell you how the play was made in the first few pages. This emotional distance of the audience lets the play show the plurality of viewpoints on the topic and the fact that these are based on real people makes the audience empathize with them by responding to them as opposed to acting as them. This response moves the audience to carry their empathy, and in turn action, outside of just the theatrical space and into other aspects of their lives.

Even though this play is incredibly impactful for many people, not everyone agrees to participate. Jill Dolan discusses a group of students from an Introduction to Theatre course at the University of Texas who were required to see a production. Many of them didn’t pay attention to the production and behaved poorly during it. This brings up the question of why. Dolan presents a few possible explanations, from simple boredom to “resentment at being required to see a ‘gay’ play,” but I would like to propose that they didn’t want to be there or participate because it was required (Dolan 113-138). Demand avoidance is a very common occurrence and is “characterized by a strong aversion to perceived demands” (Nerodivergent insights, 2023). How can we face this in an art form that relies so heavily on the attention and action of the audience? When we see shows, there is a demand to the audience to actively engage, which is made even more apparent in types of theatre, like Theatre of the Oppressed, that directly involve the audience. How then can we do art when so many people refuse to play? How can we keep an audience engaged and invested when we send the call to action? Is it even possible, or will we always have to deal with at least a few people who refuse to play? I think it is most likely that there will always be at least a few who refuse to play, but that as theatre artists, it is our job to engage as many as possible with whatever piece we’re doing.

With a piece like this, its unfortunately topical themes make this job easier.

It discusses the “live and let live” mentality at length, highlighting the dangers of that kind of thinking. It was this mentality that was one of the factors in the death of Matthew Shepard. This “live and let live” mentality and violence like this is becoming more and more prevalent and is leading to more of these catastrophes. An eerily similar example was in February of last year (2024), Nex Benedict, a sixteen-year-old nonbinary student, was beaten in the girls’ bathroom at their school by three of their peers, resulting in severe head trauma. This was after a year of unchecked anti-trans bullying. After this incident, the school failed to report the incident to the authorities. Nex was taken to the hospital, released, and was re-admitted the following day. They died on February 8th, 2024 (Soto, 2024). This isn't the only story either. There were at least 32 trans deaths in 2024 in the United States stemming from hate-related crimes (Human Rights Campaign 2024). This isn't counting those that go unreported or undocumented, or the rest of the LGBT community, or any country outside of the United States. Without discussion around this topic, things will only get worse. The theatre can be a vessel for this type of discussion when plays like this are put onstage.