Two queers and a Catholic priest
Well. So. My playwriting class kinda disliked Laramie Project. Let’s walk through some of their issues.
First. Costumes: We agreed that everyone’s shirts looked kinda dirty. I noted that the costume designer put little logos and symbols on everyone’s grey shirts, but the thing is, the audience couldn’t really see the logos, which renders them pointless. It’s even worse when you can _kind of_ see the logos, but not clearly enough to make them out, so that they just look like dirty spots.
The uniforms and their, uhhh, uniformity, was also confusing to the class. It was confusing to me at first too. A uniform would make a speech, disappear, and another uniform would come back out. After a while I realized that the play was organized in a way that kept story arcs distinct even if characters weren’t. No one else in the class seemed to realize this. Ha ha ha, I’m more sophisticated than everyone else.
Second. Act II dragged. Yeah, they’re right with this one. After the scene with the big-ass band of angels, the other loose plot arcs felt so minor that I wasn’t even concerned with them.
Third. There was a sense that it was too preachy? In a literal sense, there were a lot of priests as characters. But my classmates were annoyed that sometimes the interviewers distracted from the monologues. Like, when talking to negative characters, the interviewers would pace and frown.
I say: so what? Were they supposed to be ‘neutral?’ And if so, why? As someone who’s done a tiny bit of journalism, my best interviews — the ones that yield the most information — are the hostile ones. Like when people feel insulted that they have to answer such a dumb question, or they feel that they’re under attack and have to articulate their positions better. But that’s all beside the point. The point is that the actors are, in fact, not journalists; they’re characters too. Their characters are _acting_ the way a gay man or woman would act confronting a haughty, adversarial religious figure. Can I get an amen?
Fourth. One student (Patrick) said he saw the Laramie Project performed, years ago, at an "International Thespians’ Conference," and that their performance "blows this one out of the water." He mentioned several times that he had been to the International Thespians Conference, from which I believe he meant to make it clear that he is a Pretentious Literary Douchebag. Every English class has one of these, and usually it’s me, but not this time I guess.
Okay, good points:
When I heard about what the play actually was — a series of monologues based on interviews — I was pretty sure it would be boring. But it’s not! Tectonic actually managed to frame some story arcs out of what information they gleaned, and they managed to make an overall story arc out of it, which was pretty rad.
The play builds a sense of "going there," of approaching something and almost arriving but not quite. Even acting out the confession feels lacking; something dire has been excised from the narrative. That something is Matthew Shepard. That, in its subtle way, is the point. He’s gone and can’t say anything, no matter how badly we want to hear from him.
I saw the dress rehearsal, obvs, and that wasn’t bad. There was a long moment, after Reggie found out she might have AIDS, when Mackenzie looked me dead in the eye. I couldn’t turn away, and she just wouldn’t. After a few moments I felt something strange. I….I think some dust got in my eye. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, I thought her performance would have been powerful and moving without that eye contact. But with it, I felt, just for a moment, that there might actually be more to life than just martinis, girls, and guns, that I have a higher purpose, and that maybe I should live to love more deeply and fully. Then her scene was over and I had a cigarette and was back to normal. THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL.
Before I saw the second performance, the Grey Lady told me she found out how to really make a better emotional connection with her character(s). It sounded like some art-fag nonsense, but then I saw the performance a second time, and she was absolutely right! I kept hoping for her to make eye contact with me, but it’s a good thing she didn’t, because then I might have, ahem, had more dust in my eye. People would have gotten the wrong idea.
