Thoughts on “The Laramie Project” + an anecdote

So last weekend I opened and closed “The Laramie Project” and honestly what a whirlwind of a production. Going into this production I knew that this was going to be a show that was going to be difficult, but it was a show that was so special that when the opportunity came up I kind of knew I couldn’t pass it up.

My relationship with this show was fairly limited, I had watched some fellow students of mine at Butler perform the play as a staged reading when I was in college, and the year following I was in the reading of “Laramie: Ten Years Later.” So all this to say it had been a few years but I knew what I was in for.

I was intimidated, I was anxious, I was honored to be in the room with the group I was with but the content was really hard to sit through without squirming. I played Aaron Mckinney during his confession and that scene was so hard to do, when we first rehearsed it I had to pause halfway through because saying words on a page knowing that these are words a real person said after committing a real act of violence was genuinely overwhelming.

After that moment I can’t put into words the warmth and kindness in the group I got to tell this story with. I couldn’t be happier to share a stage with a group as talented as they are kind and fun to be around.

I feel this way about a lot of shows but the reason I’m going out of my way to type about this show in particular is just the love that was necessary to perform this show even for just one weekend. Our entire cast was directed to remain on stage for the entirety of the production so we all felt every second of the show every night we performed it. And feeling the show was a lot to endure. But we felt it together. And the talent of our cast is what made the show so hard to endure at times. But post show hugs and checking in on each other made it possible. And we did it.

I also want to share a moment I shared with an audience member after our closing performance.

To preface, one person I played was Jedadiah Shultz, a University of Wyoming Theatre student who is represented through multiple monologues sharing his story of getting into college through performing a scene from “Angels in America” at a high school theatre competition and his parents actively not supporting him because he was playing a gay man on stage. He then goes on to play the lead role, Prior, in a production of “Angels in America” at school and shares his parents thoughts on that in a monologue that lightens the mood in the room for a short moment.

So after our closing performance, a young girl approaches me telling me she’s a freshman theatre student and that Jedadiah Shultz is her acting teacher. My jaw drops. She goes on to tell me that I did a good job and that she thinks he would’ve enjoyed my performance. I get chills, I thank her for approaching me because I could be existing without knowing that. It was just a beautiful moment and I’ll be thinking about that for a long time.

I’ll also share I and the rest of the cast received a lot of thank yous for the performance, mostly from queer folks and those mean just as much. And I’ll be transparent. I don’t feel like I make an impact through my art very often. I get caught up in the auditions and the attention and the casting of it all and sometimes you get lost and forget why you do the thing. And all of that, thats why I do the damn thing. I don’t know if my work was perfect or was effective for everyone but it affected at least one person. And this story is hard to tell. It’s hard to sit and remind people how the world was, and in this case, how the world still is. It hurts. But what was beautiful about the script itself and my experience with this production is that there was pain there was some real difficult stuff there. But in the end it does leave you feeling just a twinkle of hope.

And yeah it can feel childish, ignorant even to feel hope at times. But sometimes hope is defense mechanism. It’s a way to protect ourselves. Sometimes theatre is a defense mechanism for me too. Sometimes I use it to feel safe. Maybe theatre is a way for me to feel a sense of hope.

-RJM