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Artists Repertory Theatre
presents The Laram ie Project
May 25 to June 30
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503-280-8080
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And they’re still dealing with the traumatic,
divisive aftermath of a crime that shattered
their peaceful (complacent?) existence and
brought their hometown national scrutiny and,
many felt, disgrace.
It was those stories— the ones surrounding
and underlying The Big Story, the lives
touched by Shepard when he was just a resi
dent of Laramie and not an involuntary mar
tyr— that were uppermost in the minds of New
York playwright Moisés Kaufman and his Tec
tonic Theater Project (which won numerous
accolades for its previous play, Gross Indecency:
The Three Triáis of Oscar Wilde). Kaufman and
several members of the company traveled to
Laramie in November 1998 to begin interviews
for what was to become The Laramie Project, a
theater piece that opened two years ago in
Denver and is crossing the
country in local productions,
generating waves of acclaim.
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The Laramie Project
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Continued
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their own feelings about being in this unfamil
iar place where this incomprehensible thing
happened and interacting with the people
whose lives were directly affected.
r
he play is stmctured in “moments” wherein
excerpts from the interviews are played out,
on a loosely chronological, thematic
timetable, around a series of talking points
about Laramie, Shepard and his murderers.
Dramatic tension comes from the sequencing
of moments, the juxtaposition of one event or
point of view with another.
Each character is introduced by the play’s
narrator, who also indicates the basics of time
and place. Re-created interviews explicate life in
Laramie before Shepard’s heating, the events
leading up to the vicious crime and what unfolds
in its wake: a disruptive,
often sensationalistic media
frenzy; Shepard’s hospital bed
fight for survival and eventu
al death; a time of personal
he Tectonic group traveled
and community upheaval.
to Laramie six times during
Because the work’s
an 18-month period follow
approach is fresh and un-
ing the murder, eventually com
presumptuous (modernizing
piling, transcribing and editing
more than 200 interviews with
— Jon Kretzu the theater through focus
on form and technique is
Shepard’s friends and acquain
one of Tectonic’s explicitly stated goals) and
tances, the local authorities, the town’s clergy and
because it’s so astutely written, the effect is less
everyday Laramie residents. What they heard was
cacophonous than pacific. It feels like a
a story that, depending on the speaker, revolved
an Hind religion, sexuality, class and the image
humane act of patient, inclusive listening— a
measured, sane counteraction to the animalis
and/or values of small-town America.
tic violence that is its ultimate subject.
Rather than focusing on Shepard himself,
his horrifying experience was used by Kaufman
[ aramie's multiplicity of viewpoints— from the
and company as a catalyst to create an objec
tive, documentary-like focus on the environ
pressure lease statements of Shepard’s parents
in the days before he dies to killer Aaron
ment in which he lived and died. Though his
McKinney’s frighteningly stoic confession— also
specter hangs indelibly over the proceedings,
has the effect of implicating the audience.
he is not a character in the play.
“Hopefully it will provide.. .a lot of questions,”
Contributing to the documentary feel,
says Jon Kretzu, the director of Artists Repertory
Kaufman and his group are also characters in
Theatres production. “We’re definitely not trying
the play, detailing the interview process and
T
“Hopefully it will
p ro v id e r lot of
questions. We're
definitely not
trying to provide
any answers
L
to provide any answers. I think the audience has
to constantly question their own feelings all the
way through and constantly see the ambiguity,
perhaps, of their own feelings. It’s very important
to bring them into every aspect of what these
people are feeling and just how complex and con
flicted their emotions and thoughts are.”
Rather than seeing the play as somehow
preaching to the choir, Kretzu sees the play as
the choir. He emphasizes “really getting at what
people are saying and not commenting, not
making the easy choice that lets the audience
off the hook, that allows them to go, ‘That’s just
the stupid redneck or stupid preacher’s wife; I’m
not that person!’ What happens if they start to
feel what [the characters are] feeling? It’s the
gray areas that are most fascinating to me."
K
retzu first saw Laramie during its off-
Broadway run and knew immediately he
wanted to mount a Portland production.
“ It was one of those shows that, as you’re
watching, you go, ‘Oh, yeah, this is something
I’ve got to direct.’ ”
He also knew Artists Rep was up to it, noting
it’s a play that works “extremely well in our inti
mate setting. I feel strongly about the theater
being political— that any play is political, really—
so it just spoke to all the things we do. Since our
mission is to do plays that deal with the human
spirit, it was sort of a no-hrainer. As soon as we
could do it, we were committed to it.”
Kretzu, who is gay, actually made a trek to
Laramie in preparation for the show, more as a
quest for direct inspiration than to replicate the
fact-finding mission of Tectonic. “I just wanted
to soak things up and really honor these people,”
he says, noting he didn’t take any recording
equipment or photos. “I was really surprised that
many of them told me I was rhe only director
who had bothered to come to Laramie, aside, of
course, from the Tectonic Project people.”
But Kretzu thought the trip was necessary for
the integrity of the production. “This piece is so
ingrained in...those specific places and those
specific people. I managed to talk to six or seven
who are actual characters in the piece...and to
go to all the spots that one would want to go to,
and that was really amazing, very personal.”