Fear, Loathing, and "The Laramie Project": Narratives

After the 2006 production of TLP at my college campus, I continued to teach the play; but, but following that traumatic evening, my pedagogy changed.  For one, I adopted instead a much more autobiographical focus in my classroom.  Our department allows us to pick themes for our 101 and 102 English classes, so I picked autobiographical memory for mine.  Actually, "Memory and Atrocity" might have been a better name for my class; in addition to TLP we generally read Maus and study the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (a "semester of depression," one student quipped).  I've taught Jane Taylor's Ubu and the Truth Commission alongside TLP before, which had unpredictable but interesting results.  (Comparing TLP with autobiographical theater in South Africa is a rich, rich field of study I'm trying to research-- but more of that later.)

In my course, we read TLP as a reservoir of a crafted, collected (as opposed to collective) memory of Matt's murder, and we talk about the strengths, pitfalls, and limitations of memory to capture a specific moment in time.  We read TLP to look at the collective understanding of Matt's murder, the whys and hows of how people remember, and why personal memory is such a powerful tool for social change.  This would ultimately be good training for me, psychologically speaking, because I would have to face this play one more time:  the October reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.

NY Times Covers "10 Years Later"

The New York Times' Patrick Healy did an extensive piece similar to Newsweek's in the run-up before the presentation of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.  It has a lot of the personal focus on what happened after the media fallout that appears in the play.  You can follow this link to the article. 

Take note of a few good resources on the same article page:

• A photo essay of Laramie now  (A slide show. Woo-hoo.) 
  
• NYT's original review of the play (hidden behind a member's wall, but sign-up's free)
  
• Audio clip interviews with the principal writers (see the page)
  
• Times Topics sheets for both Matthew Shepard and Moises Kaufman 
 

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Source:  
Healy, Patrick.  "Laramie Killing Given an Epilogue Ten Years Later."  New York Times 16 Sep 2009. nytimes.com.   Web.  

The 2006 Production of "The Laramie Project" in Appalachia

Laramie Project 33, originally uploaded by rogerchoover.

If you'd like to see some stills of the well-acted undergraduate performance of TLP back in 2006 that sent me into a minor panic attack, Rocher Choover here at my college has put up a good series of stills from the performance. You can click on the picture above to follow it to his Flickr Photostream and the set for The Laramie Project.  (He also has sets for their other major performances, including Tommy, Flyin' West, Copenhagen and A Christmas Carol). 

This picture is from early on in the play, and (I think) depicts the Tectonic Theater crew discussing their upcoming project. The tall kid with the black hair with his hand on the chair is the actor who played Jed Schultz in the performance, and he interpreted his part close to the real Jed that it was really kind of scary. If memory serves, he was barely a sophomore when he did this performance. 

Looking through these pictures again actually made me feel a little queasy and jittery. But for you, I think they would be a helpful guide for picturing the nature of this second performance. Enjoy!

Fear, Loathing and "The Laramie Project": Haunted

I left Laramie in 2001 for the other side of the country.  I was recently married and my husband had a promising job lined up, so I was destined to finish my English degree at a small college in the deep South that smelled like mildew and looked like the set from a Civil War romance.  Once I left Laramie, however, I started to get an idea of what the rest of the country knew about Laramie and how the media, and how The Laramie Project as well, had colored their impression of us.  For the next eight years, it felt like every other new relationship I started also had to start with a defense of my home state.  I feel like ever since I left the Rockies I've been haunted-- haunted largely by this play.  Much of my own struggle to contend with the issues surrounding Matt's murder really come down to how I contend and find peace with The Laramie Project, but as you'll see from my story, that attempt to find peace is still very much a work in progress...

Fosco Lives! Talks about visiting the fence

California Blogspot blogger Fosco (of Fosco Lives!) drove through Wyoming back in 2006 and went to visit the fence site.  He wrote up his experience (and a short reaction to Beth Loffreda's book) on his blog later.  Actually, if you'd happen to like the perspective of an intellectual hedonist driving through the most desolate patch of Western Americana, Fosco's writeup of the entire trip makes for some hilarious (and scathing) social commentary.  But, his perspective on the fence is interesting, and it's one of the last references I've found so far to the fence actually being up.

Since I recently wrote on the fence, I thought I'd include it here.  You can visit the page at:
http://foscolives.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-laramie-project.html

Let me warn you ahead of time: Fosco writes for mature readers with a sharp sense of humor (and he gets very sharp with the west).  Don't wander by the way if you can't handle it...

No Fog West Theater Company: Doing TLP in Wyoming

So how far would you be willing to go in order to stage a production of The Laramie Project in the state of Wyoming?  No Fog West Theater was started when a Sheridan high school student wanted to perform The Laramie Project in high school, but the play was banned for its language and explicit content.  That student went to Vassar the following year, drummed up a cast, director and financial support, and then they brought The Laramie Project to Sheridan, Wyoming for a two-week run at the Carriage House Theater.  They repeated the venture again in 2008, performing Talking to Terrorists.  You can read about the company's Wyoming run in the Casper Star-Tribune, linked here. 

How's that for dedication?  It's an interesting story, and you can read some of their reactions online from their blog for No Fog West; they basically only write during their summer performance season, so there are posts from their 2007 and 2008 seasons. 

It seems that they have let their website domain expire, but you can also track them via Facebook.  Definitely check them out!

How Geoffrey Chaucer Changed My Life

As you know, I've spilled a little bit of ink giving my own relationship between academia and my home culture the talking cure, especially because I've not had a lot of luck integrating the two in any meaningful way.  A lot of times I feel like I'm trying to walk down the top of a split-rail fence without falling into a pond on one side or concrete on the other.  In particular, it's been hard making my family understand why on earth I'm still in college twelve years after high school and training to be a medievalist of all things.  I really have a hard time trying to make my life in academia useful and relevant to theirs. 

Well, the other day I got a phone call from my brother "Coyote" during dinner.  He lives in Laramie and, after about a ten year hiatus, he's finally going back to school at the University of Wyoming. He's had a few lumps and bruises, but at this point, he's doing pretty darn well.  He and I have always had a fraught relationship, but in the last five years or so it has settled out to a pleasant formula: three parts sarcasm and one part vinegar.  But, you need to understand: my brother never calls anybody.  In fact, Coyote's name pops up in my cell phone as "The Invisible Man."  If he's calling me, it's because he wants something. 

So, I pick up the phone and tell him, "Well, hi, Coyote, what's up?" and he says, "Hey, Jackrabbit, so I'm writing this paper on Chaucer's Clerk in The Canterbury Tales, and it was due forty-five minutes ago, and I'm completely stuck and can't get this paper finished.  What do I do?!"  So, I long-distance coached him over the phone for almost an hour about his paper and helped him get his ideas straight.  As it turns out, he wasn't stuck as he thinks he was; he had some awesome observations, but he needed somebody to tell him he was on the right track and fill in a little cultural context he hadn't gotten in class yet.

Coyote and I had the longest conversation we have probably had about anything since the road trip after my grandmother died last March, and about medieval society and biblical exegesis in "The Clerk's Tale" of all things. He was genuinely interested; and I was genuinely happy to help him out. 

When we were done, he said, "Okay, little sister, I better hang up and write this thing finally.  Thanks for your help."
"No problem, Coyote," I said.  "Anytime."  There was a brief pause on the other end of the phone.
"I always knew I'd figure out something you were good for eventually," he wisecracked.  "Catch you later."   And then he hung up.  

I was absolutely flying with joy for the rest of the night.