The act that forever tainted Laramie, Wyo. in October 1998 reverberated across the continent and raised the ugly spectre of gay hate crimes in a way little else has.
The first person to experience the horror, Aaron Kriefels (Daniel Grimsen), is a young man riding his bicycle. “I thought it was a scarecrow. I thought it was a Halloween gag,” he tells the audience, anguish painted across his face.
The second person to arrive at the scene of the crime is Deputy Sheriff Reggi Fluty (Chandra Ashton). The still-breathing body tied to a fence post is so badly beaten the head is partially caved in. Every inch of his face is so deeply encrusted with blood only tears have cleared a path across his skin. Fluty tries to give him artificial respiration, “but his mouth wouldn’t open,” she says, a rawness in her throat.
These are the final hours of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard’s life, described in extraordinary detail in The Laramie Project now being remounted by PETS Productions at the TransAlta Arts Barns. Tonight is the last performance of a four-day run, however its companion piece, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later plays Nov. 17 to 20 with the same actors.
The Laramie Project is a special venture by playwright/director Moises Kaufman, founder of Tectonic Theatre. A few weeks after Shepard’s murder, he travelled to the railroad town with his company to interview hundreds of residents in hopes of finding light at the end of the tunnel.
Reams have been written about Shepard and his murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, now serving life sentences. As everyone is aware, Shepard was an openly gay student who was picked up at a bar, driven to a desolate area, robbed and beaten beyond recognition.
Although Shepard has become the poster boy for random acts of violence, he never appears in the production. Instead Kaufman examines Laramie, its citizens, their reactions and the effect of the media circus. It is the real conversations of real people that are spoken and shaped into a docu-drama that forces us to confront the potential for horrific violence, even in the most placid areas. As one character says, “I guess I didn’t understand the magnitude with which people hate.”
Delivered almost as a piece of journalism, the 20-odd actors explain how they became participants. Many lavish praise on the town’s nature-loving character. “Hate is not a Laramie value,” they insist.
Yet when Zubaida Ula (Crystal Jean), a young Muslim woman recounts her story of wearing a headscarf, the idealized life everyone wants to see differs from the reality scratching below the surface.
Each actor plays several characters and many personalities come into play — bartender Matt Galloway (Jason Magee), one of the last people to see Shepard alive; the feisty mother figure Marge Murray (Wendi Pope) who knows everyone in town, and Father Roger (Bradley McInenly), a Catholic priest that asks Shepard’s story be told correctly.
This is a bleak story with few answers. But ultimately, it transcends anti-gay crimes. Every line screams one universal truth — hate of any kind is toxic and poisons everyone it touches. And if we recognize that, maybe there is a glimmer of hope.
