The Laramie Project
Oct. 23rd, 2002 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I went to the preview night of the Brandeis theater department's production of The Laramie Project, a sort of group creation by the Tectonic Theater Project's going to Laramie, Wyoming, after the brutal beating and death of a gay university student in 1998.
I had known the general topic of the play, but nothing more, so was surprised to find that it's a play with sort of levels of... well, reality isn't quite the word, but I suppose will have to do. The play is not just based on the interviews the troupe had with town residents over the course of three trips in the year following the incident, but also from the journals of the troupe members. All of this material was not, as I would've expected, digested into a single narrative play, but rather excerpted, a kaleidoscope of views on Laramie and its residents before, during, and after, the beating murder. There were a whole host of characters: each actor had 4, 5, 6, or more roles, indicated no t only by costume cues, but by introduction of another cast member as they started their piece. And it worked. I thought it an intense piece, showing so many views of what happened, and the reasons and consequences, not just a single A causing B, but a lot of responses, a lot of consequences. And a challenge to the viewer to be a better person, standing up for what is right, implicit in it.
The set was interesting, the stage starting out with a bunch of black wooden chairs placed facing a bunch of diff e rent directions scattered about. The backdrop was a huge map of Wyoming, tilted up on the right, some long turquoise neon tubing marking a couple of the major highways, and leading to the 6 different TV screens placed at the same angle in and around the m ap. They were used during the play in a couple of ways, both as background images, and as "live TV" for the medical updates broadcast by production. There was also a big red light marking Laramie on the map.
The actors are all undergrads, not grad students. I was unsure about this before the show started, but they were excellent. They slipped in and out of their variety of characters, the costume and accent changes working fine.
There were some flaws. There were times when there was a loud, sort of cutting-off sounding bang, and the actors would thump the chairs on the floor at the same time... except that mostly, their timing was off with the sound effect. At least they were all coordinated with each other...
Also, toward the end of this rather lon g play (two 10-minute intermissions, so we got out three hours after we started), there was a scene where the company was singing "Imagine" and one person was doing an interpretive dance. It was pretty and all, but not at all in the the feeling of th e rest of the play, which was all about not even paraphrasing, but excerpting, showing the breadth of response and emotion in the wake of this horrible event, all sorts of consequences, and the things that have not changed.
I thought it was an excellent production, and was surprised that any people left early, despite the hour.
Oh, and it was nice to go with Pinkfish; I don't think we've talked that much before.
I had known the general topic of the play, but nothing more, so was surprised to find that it's a play with sort of levels of... well, reality isn't quite the word, but I suppose will have to do. The play is not just based on the interviews the troupe had with town residents over the course of three trips in the year following the incident, but also from the journals of the troupe members. All of this material was not, as I would've expected, digested into a single narrative play, but rather excerpted, a kaleidoscope of views on Laramie and its residents before, during, and after, the beating murder. There were a whole host of characters: each actor had 4, 5, 6, or more roles, indicated no t only by costume cues, but by introduction of another cast member as they started their piece. And it worked. I thought it an intense piece, showing so many views of what happened, and the reasons and consequences, not just a single A causing B, but a lot of responses, a lot of consequences. And a challenge to the viewer to be a better person, standing up for what is right, implicit in it.
The set was interesting, the stage starting out with a bunch of black wooden chairs placed facing a bunch of diff e rent directions scattered about. The backdrop was a huge map of Wyoming, tilted up on the right, some long turquoise neon tubing marking a couple of the major highways, and leading to the 6 different TV screens placed at the same angle in and around the m ap. They were used during the play in a couple of ways, both as background images, and as "live TV" for the medical updates broadcast by production. There was also a big red light marking Laramie on the map.
The actors are all undergrads, not grad students. I was unsure about this before the show started, but they were excellent. They slipped in and out of their variety of characters, the costume and accent changes working fine.
There were some flaws. There were times when there was a loud, sort of cutting-off sounding bang, and the actors would thump the chairs on the floor at the same time... except that mostly, their timing was off with the sound effect. At least they were all coordinated with each other...
Also, toward the end of this rather lon g play (two 10-minute intermissions, so we got out three hours after we started), there was a scene where the company was singing "Imagine" and one person was doing an interpretive dance. It was pretty and all, but not at all in the the feeling of th e rest of the play, which was all about not even paraphrasing, but excerpting, showing the breadth of response and emotion in the wake of this horrible event, all sorts of consequences, and the things that have not changed.
I thought it was an excellent production, and was surprised that any people left early, despite the hour.
Oh, and it was nice to go with Pinkfish; I don't think we've talked that much before.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-23 06:40 pm (UTC)I found myself reviewing the play over and over in my head today. It was intense, not so much because of the subject matter (which was also intense), but because of the intimacy that the format of the project brought. The players began as interviewers, but eventually became contributors.
There was one actor who I thought was doing a particularly believable job of one of his roles, until I realized that the role he was playing was a young undergraduate theatre major. Hmmmm . . . maybe he wasn't doing such a good acting job. He certainly gave the image of being a young gay man who has yet to come out, even to himself, though there was nothing in the text to indicate that.
A very minimalist production, where a single item of clothing - usually a shirt or a scarf - would indicate the change of character. They each had a "no costume" costume for use when they played an anonymous character or narrator; two of them wore T-shirts with "Brandeis" on them for this purpose. Making it clear that during this time, they were undergrads in this very university. This added to the intimacy of the event.