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44 °F Forecast | Road Cams Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend February 24, 2004 ‘Laramie Project’ looks at biases behind gay student’s death By MOLLY HOLLENBACH for the Mail Tribune "The Laramie Project," produced by the Grants Pass community theater company Connect The Dots, is special in several ways. As a play about a town coming to terms with a tragic crime, its sold-out performances last weekend in Grants Pass represented the successful culmination of four months of work that went far beyond rehearsing. This is a fine, well-paced production with occasional flashes of brilliance. But Connect The Dots’ mission is more than theater; it’s also about opening minds. In a series of community forums that began last November, the group used the play as an opportunity for discussion and reflection on intolerance, hate and acceptance of diversity. The characters and their dialogue come from interviews with the townspeople of Laramie. The play is based on these interviews, and the dialogue is real. This gives a truthfulness to the play that in some ways trumps fiction. And finally, the cast is a whole community in itself. The play is usually produced with eight actors in multiple roles, but so many people turned out for the audition in Grants Pass that producers James Pate, Shane Skinner and director Bobbi Kidder decided to cast 50 of them, varying in age and acting experience but collectively creating a strong presence. In 1998, as a character in the play says, Laramie, Wyo., became defined by a crime — the brutal beating to death of a young University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard, who was gay. Advertisement A New York theater company, the Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman, traveled to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews of residents over the course of the year after the incident. The play includes the interviewers as characters, and draws from their journals and notes as well as the tape-recorded interviews. The first act establishes the essential normalcy of this small Western town, a place where people are happy to live. It also establishes Matthew as a bright, friendly and straightforward person. But the unconscious violence underlying attitudes toward homosexuality is well conveyed in a scene with Marge Murray, described as a social service worker. Murray insists that Laramie is a tolerant town — "Laramie is live and let live!" — but in the same breath asserts in a matter of fact way that, of course, somebody might "poke one" or "smack one in the mouth in a bar, if they’d been drinking — but then they’d just walk away." The discovery of Matthew’s unconscious body tied to a fence outside of town rips away the town’s self-satisfaction. As eyewitnesses begin to parse the events that led to the tragedy, the audience is held in a state of fascinated tension. It’s a three-hanky play, but it also offers a kind of resolution that comes from self-understanding. "We hope this performance stimulates reflection, communications, and a sense that what joins us is far stronger than what divides us," says Kidder. The cast works well together, and with so many creditable performances it seems unfair to single out a few. Nevertheless, for outstanding performances, I’d have to mention Kevin Denson, as a young aspiring actor whose parents refused to watch him play a scene from "Angels in America"; Andy Thomas, as the young bicyclist who found Matthew; Clare Parsons, as Matthew’s friend; David Dials, as the emergency room doctor; Ed Gangner, as the anti-gay minister; Eve Smyth, as the university professor; Gary Berlant, as the detective; Joe Githler, as a bar owner; Richard Blake, as a Catholic priest; Richard Michelon, as a Unitarian minister; and Shane Skinner, who is also the program director for Connect The Dots. Among the outstanding performers are many with decades of acting experience, as well as several who have never acted before. Parsons, Blake and Michelon, all new to the stage, created particularly believable characters, a testament to their own talent and Kidder’s directing and teaching skill. Molly Hollenbach is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. Show times, tickets What: "The Laramie Project," by Moises Kaufman. When: 8 p.m. Wednesday. Where: Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, 23 S. Central Ave., Medford. Tickets: $12 to $16 for adults, with discounts for seniors and children. Call 779-3000. Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! 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