THE LARAMIE PROJECT
showing at the Cochrane Theatre, London, until Sunday 6 April
About sixteen years ago, I saw a film about the murder of a gay man: The Life And Times Of Harvey Milk. It left me tearful, angry, and turbo-charged with determination to fight against this injustice. 'The Laramie Project' is a play about the murder of a gay man, and had the same effect on me.
In 1998, in Laramie, Wyoming, 21-year-old student Matthew Shepard was kidnapped from a bar, driven out to deserted countryside, tied to a fence and beaten with fists and gun butts. He was left there for eighteen hours, before being found and taken to hospital, where he died. The policewoman who attended the scene said that the only part of his face that was not caked in blood was where his tears had fallen.
For 'The Laramie Project', members of a theatre company went to Laramie and interviewed local residents. The eight actors use the words they recorded, playing a variety of characters, each of whom talks directly to the audience. It is recollection rather than playing out, speeches rather than action, almost a documentary rather than a play. But it is all the more powerful for that.
We are invited to consider why Laramie? At the start, as a few characters were played for laughs, I worried that we would get a mocking of country-bumpkin comic stereotypes. But all but the worst bigots - even those with quite dodgy views - were portrayed sympathetically.
We are told that many gay people get out of Laramie as fast as they can. Others stay, determined that they can live how and where they choose. Many, like Matthew, find support in the university lesbian and gay society. But the university establishment can only wring its hands, and there is not a gay bar in the whole of Wyoming.
Of course, it is not just Laramie. It could be a thousand other small towns. And some big ones too.
So why? What drives two working-class young men to routine violence to rob a little money, and then spectacular, vicious brutality when the victim is gay? 'The Laramie Project' does not fully answer this question, but at least it asks.
In the stories of both Harvey Milk and Matthew Shepard, it is not just the killing that offends, but the collaboration of institutions and attitudes. In Milk's case, the courts cradled his assassin - ex-cop and right-wing city councillor Dan White - in sympathy and understanding, and dealt him the mildest sentence in its gift. Matthew's killers - Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson - got life. But the churches, and the sick 'morality'; they teach, stand accused of encouraging, then justifying, his murder.
For most, it is the modern, diplomatic version of homophobia, in which no-one is supposed to admit to hating gay people, but they can always add a "but". "I don't condone murder, but I hope he had the chance to repent before he died." "I believe in live-and-let-live, but you have to question his character: he was just a barfly." "It’s tragic, but the gay lobby will exploit this for their own agenda."
But there is an exception, who has no problem flaunting his hatred. Pastor Fred Phelps picketed Matthew’s funeral and his killer's trial, celebrating his burning in eternal hell, declaring 'God hates fags' and 'Thank God for AIDS'. He still runs a website on which you can 'click to hear Matthew scream'.
It seems that the Ranting Reverend will be protesting outside the last showing of The Laramie Project at London's Cochrane Theatre at 2pm on Sunday 6 April. Perhaps we should not be too distracted by looney-tooney bigots far out on the fringes, and instead concentrate on fighting legal discrimination and the mainstream reactionary right. But neither should we let this utterly inhuman poison go without being firmly crushed by a counter protest.
Go and demonstrate, and go to the play too. You will probably not agree with everything that is said, even on Matthew's side. You may, like me, not agree with the suggestion that the answer lies with a more benevolent God, a more liberal church. But this play involves you, moves you, angers you and inspires you. 'The Laramie Project' is fantastic.
Reviewer: Janine Booth
