The Laramie Project

Reviewed by G. Bruce Smith
The Group Rep at Lonny Chapman Theatre
Through May 21

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The horrifying murder of college student Matthew Shepard — a small-framed, 21-year-old man who was beaten and left to die strapped to a fence outside Laramie, Wyo. — created a haunting image indelibly imprinted in the minds of many Americans. His death in 1998 also marked a moment of reckoning for Americans on how we think about and treat members of the LGBTQ community, as well as serving as a wake-up call to the lack of hate crime laws in many states.

Also out of this tragedy came The Laramie Project, a groundbreaking play by Moises Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski and The Tectonic Theater Project that premiered in Denver in 2000. The collective of theater artists conducted more than 200 interviews of  Laramie residents over a one-year period — resulting in an insightful and sometimes moving work, now in a production by The Group Rep in North Hollywood.

The play focuses on a wide range of Laramie inhabitants — from a rancher to a University of Wyoming theater professor to a preacher, and many more. Reactions to the murder ranged from shock to silence (from the conservative clergy) to rationalization — one townsperson says Shepard’s murder was partly his own fault because “If I don’t tell you I’m a fag, you won’t beat me.”

Underlying many of the interviews is a defensiveness. Laramie is a good town. People love the climate. It’s safe. “Hate is not a Laramie value,” says one resident.

And yet. . .

“It’s hard to talk about Laramie now,” one inhabitant says. “It’s a town defined by a crime.”

Act II covers the guilty plea of one of the murderers and the trial of the other, both of whom received prison life sentences. Again, just before and during the trial, the reactions of Laramie residents vary. Some say Laramie “needs to own this.” A 52-year-old gay man is moved by the sight of 100 people marching for Matthew Shepard. Two meth-heads treat the murder almost as a joke. Some townspeople favor the death penalty for the two defendants.

When the Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers stage a vile protest at Shepard’s memorial, waving signs like “God Hates Fags,” a group of area activists dons costumes with huge angel wings to block out the Phelps group. It’s something of a teary-eyed moment.

In The Group Rep production, director Kathleen Delaney keeps the action moving smoothly and swiftly, but the play is too long and could do with some judicious cuts (for example, one character, a theater student at the University of Wyoming, adds nothing of value to the narrative).

Eleven actors play dozens of characters. The ensemble does good work portraying a host of very different people, inhabiting them with authenticity.

The action takes place on a mostly bare stage (set design by Mareli Mitchel-Shields) that successfully keeps the attention on the characters. Toward the end of the play, a fence is built, log by log, by members of the ensemble — creating a powerful image. The use of slides to set the location of the action is not needed; the barer the stage, the greater the power of the text.

The Laramie Project has been staged thousands of times throughout the world. It was followed up by The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, and was made into an HBO film in 2002.

Which begs the question: Why produce it now? As director Delaney says in the program, the play is still relevant today. “Our world is still on a quest for humanity and we must remind ourselves of the brutality and injustice in the world in order to change it. We need . . . to remind the next generation of the abundance of love, hate, violence, media frenzy, intrusion and activism there is in our world.”

True — but in a post-Trump nation dramatically divided, it would be interesting to see what Laramie inhabitants would say today.

Lonny Chapman Theatre Main Stage, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; thru May 21. (818) 763-5990 or https://thegrouprep.com. Running time: Two hours, with a 15-minute intermission.