Laramie Revisited

Last night I was in the theater alone. On the stage, on a ladder, paint can in my hand, painting a set piece for tonight's student performance of "The Laramie Project."

To be precise: I am painting the X-shaped fence on which Matthew Shephard was left to die.

There is something great about working alone on a stage set, at night, after rehearsal and the work day is over. The presence of what is in the process of being created presses around you, exciting and comforting, on all dimensions: in the air, in the smell of the paint and the stage, in the feel of the lights, in the echoes of the actors footsteps and the lines they just finished reading. It is an air of expectancy and of promise: of a vision in the making. This is how theater tech people enthusiastically stay up all night before opening, painstakingly finishing their work after the actors have left.

On this night in particular, I feel nearly giddy with emotions. Some of the last words that sounded on the stage on which I am working were those of Dennis Shephard, the father of brutally murdered, openly-gay college student Matthew Shephard, as read by one of our local high school students. The students self-selected "The Laramie Project," an ensemble piece by Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project, as a play they wanted to direct, stage, and present. They felt its import to their own lives on this small Maine island, at their tiny high school from which approximately 30 students graduate annually. And I can feel its importance to them, in the way they are working on this play, tussling with the language of the many characters: learning how to pronounce western place names and present adult characters--parents, preachers, doctors, judges--totally different from themselves and their experience here in Maine. They are giving this their effort and seriousness because the play's central emotional themes--of sexual choice; of acceptance; of justice--mean something to them. And as someone who came out in high school in 1978, I am so deeply moved by their work -- I could stay up on this ladder and paint the night away.

See you at the Opera House tonight, Wednesday, January 23, to bear witness to their efforts.