Powerful ‘Laramie Project’ at Playhouse

Tom Titus

Webster’s Dictionary defines “tectonic” as a term for building

virtually from the ground up. In the case of Moises Kaufman’s

Tectonic Theater Project, which created “The Laramie Project,” the

operative term here is “rebuilding.”

This powerful, involving theater piece -- based on a 1998 Wyoming

hate crime that gained national notoriety -- is now being performed

at the Laguna Playhouse, with most of the award-winning original

cast, where an opening night audience rose in unison at its

conclusion for an extended ovation.

This is a most unique form of theater. The dialogue is taken from

transcripts of the infamous Matthew Shepard case -- in which a

21-year-old University of Wyoming student was savagely beaten and

left to die tied to a fence, simply because he was gay.

The trial of the two young men convicted in the attack drew

national attention to the small (population 24,410) college town of

Laramie. It also drew Kaufman’s company, which spent a year and a

half compiling interviews on six separate visits to the city --

literally creating the play from the ground up. The dialogue is taken

directly from these transcripts.

The rebuilding task was more difficult -- changing deep-seeded

attitudes about homosexuality in a “cowboy town” far removed from a

metropolis such as nearby Denver where diversity is more readily

accepted. But, judging from the strength of the Laguna production,

this mission also has been at least partially accomplished.

The Tectonic company members -- Chad Borden, Jodi Carlisle, Chip

Heller, Nancy Learmonth, Tony Maggio, Monette Magrath, Ed E. Martin

and Alison Shanks -- each play as many as 14 different characters as

they re-create the reaction of Laramie townspeople, college faculty

and law enforcement officers regarding the crime.

The fluid ease with which the actors slip out of one character and

into another, often accompanied by an alteration in attitude, is

highly impressive. The confusion is minimal, since one company member

or another introduces each speaker to the audience as the latter

begins his or her moment in the spotlight.

The incident itself is not portrayed, nor is Matthew Shepard

depicted in the drama. But his two assailants are detailed -- one

remorseful, the other still simmering with rage -- by the same actor,

Borden, who also renders superior depictions of several other Laramie

citizens, including a young college student who won his scholarship

-- and his parents’ disapproval -- with an audition scene from the

gay-themed play “Angels in America.”

Heller enacts company leader Kaufman, along with several others,

saving his most gripping sequence for the climactic moment when, as

the victim’s father, he pleads haltingly with the court to spare the

life of one of the killers. Martin functions admirably in roles

varying from a police sergeant to a priest.

One of the play’s most poignant moments involves a mother

(Carlisle) and her policewoman daughter (Learmonth), who may have

contracted the AIDS virus from examining Shepard’s body. Compassion

and professional duty are on a collision course in this splendidly

presented segment.

Tony Maggio has some of the play’s showiest moments, and gleans

what few laughs are available, as a local bar character who became a

key witness at the trial. He also stokes the fires of prejudice as a

fervent anti-gay religious activist.

Magrath as the nervous lead writer on the project, as well as the

one who found Shepard’s near-lifeless form, and Shanks as a

conflicted Middle Eastern student complete the company, also in a

variety of assignments.

Director Nick DeGruccio has done an extraordinary job with this

demanding and logistically challenging production. It is a “project”

designed to stir the emotions as well as strike a blow for tolerance

and understanding.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.