Strengths and Weaknesses of the Play the Laramie Project

¶ … play, "The Laramie Project"

The Laramie Project: a Fictionalized Docudrama

The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman dramatizes the beating and death of a young gay man named Matthew Shepard. The infamous hate crime took place in the university town of Laramie, Wisconsin, where Matthew was a student. The play was created to educate the audience about hate crimes and to pay respect to Matthew Shepard's memory. As such, it disdains conventional dramatic conventions like a linear plot and instead takes a quasi-documentarian approach. Kaufman wrote his play, not by sitting down with pen and paper at a desk but by conducting interviews with members of the town who were involved in the incident. He also used actual news reports. The 'transcribed' nature of the play is manifest in the way many of the characters speak -- with 'ums' and 'ahs,' as people do in real life. Although this method means that the audience does not have a chance to get to know any of the characters particularly well, it creates a sense of the multiplicity of different interpretations of the crime that arose in Laramie and in the mass media after Matthew died.

The play has a 'postmodern format.' Different actors embody a variety of characters, so the audience does not associate a single actor with a single person. Most of the people of Laramie insist they are not homophobic, despite evidence to the contrary. There are flashes of insight and goodness shown on stage as well as the horrific evidence of the crime. Using different character's voices creates a more ambiguous portrait of the town. One minute, an actor is portraying a homophobic character; the next minute the character is portraying someone who is pro-gay rights.

The play is spare and minimalist in design, and mostly shows the characters talking directly to the audience. The characters' lies to themselves, their conflicts, stabs of guilt (or lack thereof) are the focus of the play, rather than their one-on-one interactions with one another. Even when Matthew is 'found,' during this dramatic scene, the characters do not actually act out the vision of seeing his bloody body and cutting him down from where he was hung. Instead, the person who found Matthew (who is sympathetic to him, saying that he believes that God intended him to find Shepard) and Officer Reggie Fluty simply recount what they see. Fluty's testimony is relatively cool and factual, while Aaron Kreifels' testimony is emotional and visceral. Just as suddenly, the play quickly shifts to the emergency room where Matthew (who was still alive at the time) was taken. The doctor on call takes over the narration, to indicate where the play has shifted in terms of its location and focus. The alternating different voices create the drama of the scene, not the visual display. Although some might argue this detracts from the audience's ability to fully appreciate what was done to Shepard, it also allows the audience to reflect upon the different reactions to the crime and ways of perceiving the crime.