The Laramie Project Stirs Empathy and Awareness 

On April 10th, the NEST+m theater department unveiled the Laramie Project which follows a team of journalist who went to the town Laramie, Wyoming to gather accounts on the grisly murder of Matthew Shepard. Shepard was an openly gay man whose death sparked nationwide outrage and garnered supporters towards the LGBT community. 

The opening scene of the Laramie Project indicated what type of play it was going to be. As the members of the cast walked up to the stage passionately delivering out of context testimonials that were equally intriguing and alarming, I knew that this was not going to be a regular high school play after seeing how unfiltered it was. The stark realism of the depiction of homophobia was refreshing from my previous experiences with how high schools tend to sacrifice art for censorship. As the play progressed I was impressed with the range of emotions that were expressed by the actors as they were able to fluidly changed inflections and reflect the idiosyncrasies of each character they represented. Particular standouts from the play include; Camylla Wiser ‘20, Julia Karas ‘20, Syed Iyashfi ‘20, Aaron Farber ‘19, Antoine Beniflah ‘20, and Edward Dawd ‘20. The play also made me reflect on my experiences as a openly gay person, as certain characters and scenes almost emulated moments in my life too well. I found myself sitting in the audience and watching the play while simultaneously feeling the cognitive dissonance of art imitating life. The fact that the Laramie Project did that for me is why I considered it to be an immensely successful production. The only points of the Laramie Project that faltered for me was the drawn-out first act which could have had better pacing but the second act more than made up for it. 

The verbatim story structure benefited the Laramie Project because of how it made the depiction of real-life events nuanced and from shifting perspectives, rather than the lense of one person. This story structure made most of the monologues carry weight since they each had the responsibility of not only establishing a new perspective but fleshing out a new character. I could continue to analyze the execution of the play, but an objective review can not be made about this play because as Mr. Yusah says this is a play, but it also deals with people's lives. Simon Rubin ‘19, cast member, and president of GSA - Gay-Straight Alliance - shares the sentiment that the Laramie Project was a success as she told us “I was really grateful with my experience in the Laramie Project and as a queer person. It was definitely, I think, very helpful to the larger NEST+m community to tell the story of Matthew Shepard because, often, we erase stories like his from our history classes and from our classroom in general. We do not show the actual real visceral consequence of hatred and homophobia…” 

We also conducted an interview with Mr. Yusah in order to gain more insight on his experiences with putting together NEST+m’s version of the Laramie Project. 

Why Laramie?

“I’m a young director and I haven't directed more than a dozen plays in my lifetime and Laramie is one of the most iconic American plays of contemporary American theater, it’s a very important play and so it had always been in the back of my mind and I always wanted to do it but I was just waiting for the right time and having seen the stock of talent that NEST+m had  this year, especially, I figured what better play to do then a play that is packed with monologues; a play packed with a bunch of characters where everyone gets a chance to do something meaningful. It was only after I was committed to doing it that I also found out that it was the 20th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's passing so it seemed to work out perfectly like the stars were aligned”

Would you say that the Laramie Project is the more different production that you have ever directed?

“I have directed 7 productions at NEST+m and they have all been incredibly different. It is different in that it’s not necessarily told in a linear story we don’t follow one hero as they go through a journey. It is what we call collage or verbatim play so it's that how different it is and that's why it's kind different when people see it they realize that this isn’t a story that we go through and it’s a bunch of people going through their experiences.”

Did you find that casting for the play was difficult or easy?

“It was very difficult, it was incredibly difficult; I had a whole excel sheet out because the play itself juggles dozens and dozens of characters and I had 36 actors at the start and so I'm literally reading the play line-by-line I'm looking at a list of 36 actors and I’m constantly, just really a shot in the dark, maybe this person works but later as I’m reading the play I’m like oh wait but that would actually fit better on somebody else and so I literally sat in a coffee shop for an entire afternoon and had to cast it, it took hours.”

Where there any particular hardships while you were directing it?

 “Yea, so the topic is about homophobia violence toward homophobia subtle and explicit. It  required us to represent all parts of this topic which includes the bad parts and there's a point in the production that we had to create signs that had the f word, f****t, and in creating the signs the students just recognize this is really painful this is really powerful there are members of the cast and crew that identify as queer and you know if treated not delicately it can be very hurtful to even just try to do these things. We're doing this as a play but this is actually people’s lives and we kind of felt that reality during the production.”

What did you learn about the reception of the play and how people receive it?

“What I learned; at least the people that approached me, I don't get to hear the people are like ‘that was boring’ you know I don't get that, ... but the people that were passionate enough to approach me were basically saying that everyone should see this, everyone should go through this journey and it kind of confirmed what I truly believe about theater in that theater is the ultimate power when it comes to empathy because no matter who you are or what you think as an audience member theaters is designed to say: ‘hey join me in this journey you're going to experience everything I experience going to feel everything I feel and by the end hopefully you will have learned something and that's what Laramie gets to do regarding homophobia regarding hate and I think a lot of students who talk to me we're really excited at the idea of putting some of their classmates through that putting some of their classmates you are still a little homophobic through that experience and force them to authentically and genuinely grow.”