Reviews for Laramie Project: A Play

The average rating for Laramie Project: A Play based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-03 00:00:00 Miguel Deschenes Polyphonic, Polyvalent Apostasy? Written in moments instead of scenes, broken fragments, not of found poetry but of found voices curated to allow the townspeople to speak for themselves. In today's moment where hate groups proliferate and violence mounts, this work remains sadly relevant. What this play says to me is that Small town America is big city America is rural America in one sense: The human animal strives for community, acceptance, love, calories, understanding, enthrallment in every context. But what's particular about this situation is that despite this being a city, most people know each other or are at most only one-degree of separation. And so, if it is true that much hate is borne from cognitive dissonance, an impersonal spacing, the fear of the Other, then you have to look at Laramie as interesting case study, where less fathomable explanations obtain. And grappling with these ideas, emotions and beliefs can be deeply troubling. "What's come out of this that's concrete or lasting?" (99) I remember when Matthew Shepard was killed. I was in high school. It was a news item. It entered my world briefly and receded just as fast. I remember hearing the criticism expressed in earnest near the end of the play about why this particular gruesome death would get so much coverage while many others went unrecognized. You still hear charges leveled about the bias reflected by the choice of which stories get a share of the blue light and which remain in the dark. So many arguments. So many points. Another one of which is that humans are really only able to experience empathy on an individual scale. On another day I will scrutinize and criticize mainstream media for dramatizing trivia and trivializing drama. But today, it's enough to say that sometimes important things come to light, if only briefly. And that sometimes people like Mr. Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project take that opportunity to ossify the moment. And so this play has coalesced as both tribute and meditation on how the world of phenomena impacts belief formation and so that perhaps, Mr. Shepard, you will not have died in vain. ----- A quick note on why I did not star (though I reserve the right to go back and change that later): I could not read this with my normal aesthetic eye (though the prose was very thoughtfully curated) as the play is one that is less literary (though it does deconstruct its own form) and more political/social/historical. But, to be clear, I think everyone should spend the hour or so it takes to read, as everyone can take something from it. I put off reading this for so long not because the subject matter was depressing. If I'm being honest, it was more likely that I thought it wouldn't tell me something I didn't already know. Going back as far as secondary school I have been concerned and involved with issues of social justice. I have long considered myself radically progressive and an LBGTQ ally. Nonetheless, I took quite a bit away from this experience, not the least of which was the philosophical meditation on apostasy. "And I will speak with you, I will trust that if you write a play of this, that you say it right. You need to do your best to say it correct." (100)

Review # 2 was written on 2007-03-19 00:00:00 J B Every American should read or see this play. Period. And everyone else should read it too. It is a beautiful, sad, haunting funny biography of a town trying to cope with tragedy. The unsparing honesty of the words, which are taken directly from first-person interviews with real Laramie residents, takes this play out of the realm of Really Good Theatre into something even higher; it's a mirror through which we see ourselves. I directed this play in Ireland in a town similar to Laramie, and similar to Walla Walla, Washington where I went to school . . . small, old-fashioned, conservative-ish towns with a big liberal college smack in the middle, creating all kinds of unavoidable tension. I was really pleased at the positive reception, which proved that you don't have to be a liberal Democrat American to find great resonance in the story. Seriously. Everyone should read this play.