The USM 2004-05 theatre season opened last weekend with “The Laramie Project.” The moving two-act play chronicles the events surrounding the 1998 fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming. Written by Moises Kaufman and the New York based, Tectonic Theater Project, the play uses excerpts from interviews conducted by the Tectonic Project to provide an intimate-and often profoundly disturbing-look at the nature of hate-based violence in America.
The play opened with the cast-an ensemble of eight, all of whom were on stage at all times-filing into the auditorium and proceeding to the stage. The set, designed by USM senior Jerome Wills, was effectively sparse, utilizing multiple platforms and a representation of the infamous fence to which Shepard’s assailants tied him and left to die, placed toward the back at stage left. Wills also employed the use of slides projected onto a screen at stage right reflecting various events as they unfolded in the play, including photos of Shepard and specific headings designed to identify transitions on the stage as they occurred.
Those transitions could have been a major obstacle in this production: Over the course of the two acts, each performer played multiple roles, often having to switch from one to the next in the space of no more than a beat or two. Director Wil Kilroy handled the obstacle perfectly, combining the aforementioned projected headings with subtle prop or costume changes and brief introductions of each new character by another of the actors. As a result, something that could have potentially been baffling or off-putting for the audience was instead an interesting device to keep the story moving and the acting fluid.
Highlights included performances that alternately moved the audience from tears to laughter. Senior Dave Ciampa’s comic prowess came to the fore in each of his roles, but particularly as limousine driver Doc Galloway and bartender Matt Galloway; it is truly a sign of intelligence and skill for an actor to understand his characters well enough to portray them with both sympathy and humor and Ciampa did both with aplomb. Senior Karen Ball’s portrayal of sheriff’s deputy Reggie Fluty-who attended Shepard at the crime scene-was an honest, stunningly subtle portrayal of small-town decency and its elevation to heroism in the face of tragedy.
One of the most moving moments in the production was handled with devastating grace by junior David Branch, playing Matthew Shepard’s father. Excerpted from a speech delivered by Shepard’s real-life father to the court during trial, asking that one of Matthew’s assailants be given a life sentence rather than the death penalty, Branch’s raw emotion in that scene was heart-wrenching without ever becoming melodramatic or maudlin. Similarly, sophomore Stacy Strang-who played a number of notable roles in the play-gave her most memorable performance with virtually no lines at all, as Shepard’s mother. As with Branch, Strang was able to travel to a place of gripping loss with the fearlessness and honesty of a formidable stage talent.
Rounding out the cast were sophomore Erik Moody, junior Jason Cook and seniors Casey Pratt and Amy Von Vett. Though Cook’s emotional scenes bordered on overwrought, his professionalism and considerable stage presence more than made up for his occasional forays into melodrama. Von Vett gave a dynamic performance as a Laramie fundamentalist preacher and Moody’s youthful vigor as actor-in-training Jedediah Schultz provided an insightful look at the struggles of a small-town youth coming to terms with his family’s views on religion and homosexuality, while Pratt’s portrayal of your average redneck girlfriend was handled with precision and candor.
The play ended with the ensemble taking center stage with candles, “Amazing Grace” playing softly in the background. As the cast filed off stage, leaving the audience with music, the fence and, above it all, the image of Matthew Shepard projected onto the screen amidst a starlit Laramie sky. The anonymity of those final moments of virtual silence in the auditorium brought home, with startling clarity, the play’s message: Matthew Shepard was any young man in any small town in America. The grief, anger and confusion suffered in Laramie was a universal response to a problem America has yet to resolve.