Photo by Steph Willis
MARIA MELCHIORRE
Staff Writer
The black space of Bartlett Theatre darkened as cast members, one by one, blew out a candle. “The Laramie Project” ended as it began: Cast members in a circle on a dimmed stage hummed “Amazing Grace.”
The stage was simple: a painted satellite image of the United States, with a zoomed-in pin on Laramie, Wyoming, grounding a play by a liberal New York theater company firmly in the American West. Additionally, above the four exits in the theater were placed signs for the University of Wyoming, the Laramie Police Department, the bar at which Matthew Shepard was last seen and the hospital in which he died.
The costumes, as black box as the theatre, allowed for subtle transitions from character to character with cast members simply adding a scarf or a sweater to their simple ensembles.
“It’s really good so far,” said Nayla Kabir, a junior marketing major, at intermission. “I really love how simply they are presenting the show.”
The show opened with actor James Lillin narrating the scene and introducing characters and evolved from there, giving each actor introductory and narrative rights.
“Its very equal,” said Kabir, of the acting and weight of each of the roles. Each of the actors was equally important, equally influential.
Photo by Steph Willis
The props were used and reused in poignant ways. The fence to which Shepard was bound and beaten later served as the judge’s podium, a barrier between the voice of justice and the two young perpetrators of a hate crime.
“It was incredibly moving,” said Dean Bavisotto, junior English major. “The fact that they’re doing these shows and bringing in Judy, Matthew Shepard’s mother, is just so great.”
The shows are “quite relevant in the world today,” as Kabir put it. Indeed, the university is taking a great step this year by making the Mainstage production not only more interactive than usual, but increasingly topical.
“The acting is really great,” said Kabir, “you can really tell the differences between the characters.”
The simplicity of the show’s design allowed the actor’s strengths to shine through. Each actor played multiple roles, often consecutively, running offstage as one character and returning to the spotlight mere seconds later, in a different hat or sweater, and taking on a completely different persona.
This character-driven aspect of the show is the anchor of the piece’s emotional impact. Most notably Lillin’s tears as the CEO of the hospital in which Shepard died.
“Why did I lose it like that on live TV?,” he exclaimed in character, nodding to the sequence of real life events which occurred in Laramie following Matthew’s death.
As the play progressed to Shepard’s funeral, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church was portrayed with a hateful, homophobic sign. The actors surrounded him in huge white cloth wings, shuttering him from view.
Laramie builds to its end by focusing on the apologies of the young killers to the family of Shepard. This is part of the tie to the companion piece, “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later,” in which the audience receives more information about the minds and lives of the two young men than was given in the original “Laramie Project.”
“I definitely want to see the epilogue,” said Kabir, “I was required to read the original in my Drama and Film class, as so many of us are, but I’ve never even heard of the other one.”
“They are most definitely two stand-alone pieces,” said Tom Loughlin, chair of the Theater and Dance Department, “but it is certainly a rewarding experience to witness the staging of both.”
Photo by Steph Willis