Life lines The Laramie Project BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The Laramie Project By Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project. Directed by Anthony F. DeRose. With Ashley Arnold, Tom Dimaggio, Sarah Grandy, Jennifer Grossman, Jessica Grossman, Jason Hair, Evelyn Holley, Shannon McLoud, Dennis McMenamy, Josh Seidlitz, Jason Tisi, Dave Quinn, Ruth Waterman, and J. Chris Quint. Presented by the People’s Theatre at Bell Street Chapel through August 1.

The research behind The Laramie Project was both a journalistic and a theatrical enterprise. Throw in sociological challenge as well. The stage presentation was developed in the aftermath of the 1998 killing of Matthew Shepard, the gay young man who was beaten, tortured, and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming. In six visits over a year and a half, Moisés Kaufman and members of his Manhattan-based Tectonic Theater Project interviewed more than 200 townspeople. The result was an ensemble play representing local characters speaking their own words. The Laramie Project is being staged in Providence by a new company, the People’s Theatre, who make sure that the play’s message of concern comes through loud and clear.

The killing immediately attracted enormous media attention. There was the tabloid appeal of the unconscious victim languishing in a hospital, with status reports issued periodically and candlelight vigils held around the country. Shepard died three days after his attack. Fortunately, his two killers were quickly identified — one was too dimwitted to remove Shepard’s black patent leather shoes from his pick-up truck. Their capture forced media concern to shift from who to why. Why in Laramie? Local aberration or American as cherry pie?

An anecdote related by Laramie student Jediadiah Schultz (Jason Hair) captures the town in microcosm, from the openness to gays by some to the intolerance of the "family values" set. Schultz tells of performing an audition scene from Angels in America despite his parents’ disapproval and despite his not being gay. Hair, the best actor in this production, is quite moving in a later scene, portraying the person who found Shepard battered and unrecognizable, tied to a fence for 18 hours in nearly freezing weather.

The play does its job largely by getting us to care for such people as that young man, who struggles to find some God-ordained meaning in his role — he had noticed the immobile Shepard only because his bicycle threw him. The Laramie Project delivers its message in that way, by showing rather than telling. In another instance, we follow the ordeal of policewoman Reggie Fluty (Jessica Grossman), who gets blood on her hands, torn up from ranch work, and learns that Shepard was HIV-positive.

Laramie wasn’t exactly open to homosexuals — we learn from a cab driver that the cowboy set had to drive 11/2 hours to Colorado for gay bars. At the local university, members of a gay and lesbian alliance don’t complain about harassment. The friendly and openly gay Shepard should have been a surprise to no one, not even to the two high school dropouts who lured him out of a bar to rob him. As that cab driver Doc O’Connor (Tom Dimaggio) says: "If there are eight men and one woman in a bar, you tell me — who’s getting what?" The obvious social pathologies that prompt gay-bashing stay mercifully in the background; for the most part, we’re not instructed that dehumanizing people is bad. Representing the self-righteous Right, Dimaggio plays a minister giving a Bible-thumping sermon as well as a homophobic protest leader outside one of the trials, who declares, "God’s hatred is pure!" More interestingly, we hear from people who pay lip-service to being tolerant but then reveal themselves to be somewhat less. For example, a cop’s wife (Ashley Arnold) is upset that the Shepard killing diminished media time taken up with the killing of a fellow highway patrolman that same week. Not getting that a hate crime adds a dimension to violence, she says she just doesn’t understand: "If you murder somebody, you hate ’em."

This 14-member troupe ranges from experienced actors to high school students, yet with one exception director Anthony F. DeRose manages to get them out of the way of the clear presentations that the text provides. Most inhabit these characters with convincing naturalness — such as Dennis McMenamy as a sullen killer, and Evelyn Holley as a devout but hip scarf-wearing Muslim student. Only one of the actors is a wince-inducing ham.

The Laramie Project doesn’t settle for merely being a string of transcripts read by walking and talking heads. This documentary play may not be a linear narrative, but it does have a dramatic arc: the impact on the town comes first, and after intermission we get a close-up of the crime and resulting trials. Moisés Kaufman, who also wrote the screenplay for the 2002 HBO film adaptation, has skillfully fashioned a theatrical template that actors of every ability can fit themselves into.