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The hope behind “The Laramie Project”

By Uyenthi Tran

Parents, friends, and community members packed the Margaret Williams Theater at East High School Nov. 18, to support the Eastside Players on the opening night of their fall play, “The Laramie Project.” The show had already sold out for the final performance Saturday night, and on Thursday, every last ticket at the door was sold, in addition to the tickets sold by the students themselves.

A play by Moisés Kaufman, “The Laramie Project” chronicles the life of a small town in Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998. Matthew, a young college student, was brutally beaten and left for dead, because he was gay. He was beaten so badly that when he was found unconscious, 18 hours later, the only clean skin on his face was where his tears had washed the blood away.

The play draws its material from interviews with over 200 Laramie residents, interviews conducted by Kaufman and other members of New York’s Tectonic Theater Project, who traveled to Laramie a month after Shepard’s murder. Nearly 50 young actors at East High School brought the townspeople of Laramie to the stage of Margaret Williams Theater, from the bicyclist who found Shepard to his accused murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The three-act performance brought laughter from the audience, as actors described fond memories of Shepard and the small town quirks of Laramie. But, more than the laughter, the play also elicited sighs and gasps from the audience as the bigotry, hate, tolerance, and compassion of the Laramie townspeople were recreated.

Although communities and schools do not always warmly receive the play, for director Tara L. Affolter, an English teacher at East, Madison has the “willingness” to put issues like this on stage. “High school kids should have the opportunity to do serious work,” she said. There’s room for lighthearted comedy too, of course, Affolter says, but “this play in particular allows viewers and actors to see humanity in all people” and gives people a chance to see this hate crime from Laramie’s point of view. People were very open from the time the scripts were ordered and the community at large was “overwhelmingly supportive,” she said, even when news came that a group was  planning to protest the play during its matinee and evening performances.

Kevin Dill, a junior who played Russell Henderson and two other parts in the play, agreed that kids at the school were “very respectful” of the play. Outside of East High School and Madison, however, “respectful” doesn’t always describe how people regard the play, homosexuality, and Matthew Shepard. As Kevin sat in the torn jeans he was wearing for his part, in full makeup to counteract the harsh stage lighting, he described the cast’s anticipation of the protest on Saturday. If the protestors arrive as planned, “We’re completely ignoring them,” Kevin said resolutely. “All the cast members will be in the building by the time they get here.”

The protestors, to be led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, are from Kansas; they often protest at events perceived as gay-friendly, and are prepared to rile counterprotestors. Phelps and his supporters even protested at Matthew Shepard’s funeral.

The decision to ignore Phelps, Kevin explained, is because “two bouts of hate don’t make a right.”

The hate that motivated the murder of Matthew Shepard also motivated many Americans, the media, and then-President Bill Clinton to call for more hate crime legislation. Here in Wisconsin, state laws cover hate crimes based on sexual orientation but not gender identity. In Wyoming, meanwhile, laws do not address discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, and Wyoming does not have hate-crime laws.

Current federal hate-crime law, which was passed by Congress in 1968, allows federal investigation and prosecution of hate crimes based on race, religion, and national origin. The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), would broaden federal jurisdiction to include hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, or disability. In May 2004, Senators Kennedy and Smith reintroduced the act for the fourth time as an amendment to a defense bill, the only vehicle at the time available, to force the vote. Although the act was approved 65-33 by the Senate in July and 213-186 by the House in September, in October, GOP leaders of the House rejected the proposal during negotiations with the Senate.

Homosexuality was at the center of the “moral values” debate surrounding the presidential election this month. And with President Bush’s re-election and Republican control of the House and Senate, the future of gay civil rights legislation in the next four years does not look positive. But as Affolter, the director of “The Laramie Project” at East High School noted, perhaps Doc O’Connor, a character from the play, put it best when he said, “This whole thing wraps around hope, H-O-P-E.”