LBHS play resonates after Orlando tragedy

Overcoming raft of challenges, high school students stage ‘The Laramie Project’

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Michael Campione, far left, Shae Sennett, Shea McMahon, Jen Arnaud, Kristen Miciotta, Noelani Tomicick, Anna Falvey, Chris Lester, America Muratori, Alana Garcia and David Newman, front, made up the cast of “The Laramie Project,” Long Beach High School’s first student-run production.
Michael Campione, far left, Shae Sennett, Shea McMahon, Jen Arnaud, Kristen Miciotta, Noelani Tomicick, Anna Falvey, Chris Lester, America Muratori, Alana Garcia and David Newman, front, made up the cast of “The Laramie Project,” Long Beach High School’s first student-run production.
Courtesy Gabrielle Tomicick

In the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in American history, at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, students at Long Beach High School staged “The Laramie Project” last week, a play that focuses on the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was murdered in 1998, and the community’s reaction to the killing.

The play was written in 2000, and has since become one of the most widely produced shows in America. The writers traveled to Laramie, Wyo., to conduct more than 200 interviews with community members over a two-year span after Shepard was beaten, tortured and tied to a fence by two men in a remote area near Laramie. He died six days later of severe head injuries, and the men who attacked him — claiming they only planned to rob him but then killed him in a rage when Shepard made a sexual advance — were convicted of murder and sentenced to consecutive life sentences.

“No high school play is ever controversial,” said Board of Education President Roy Lester, whose son, Chris, was a cast member. “They’re musicals or comedies or something like that, so it’s never something where emotions get involved, or deep emotions, and this one was.”

The show is made up of quotes from the interviews of people reacting to Shepard’s death, said Anna Falvey, a senior at the high school who directed the play. Having approached school officials around the start of the school year hoping to persuade them to let her direct the show, Falvey said she realized that staging the school’s first-ever student-run production would be no easy task.

Falvey said the administration gave her approval to do the show in February, and had to recruit actors quickly and conduct auditions — with scripts yet to arrive — in order to prepare for the June show dates. Many students who normally participate in the school’s theater productions backed out — some criticizing the show’s lack of gay actors, according to Falvey — and others with little or no acting experience stepped in. Nine students, mostly juniors and seniors, some of whom who had never been in a play before, portrayed 60 roles, she said.

“We were very lucky with the group of kids we got, because we were all very determined to put on this show and were very invested in it,” said Kristen Miciotta, a junior cast member who was performing in her first high school production. “… If you have an understanding of the show, and if you understand your character, it was easy for us to understand them as people and portray them. It wasn’t so much of an ‘actor’ play, necessarily; it’s more of a ‘people’ play.”

Working around their busy schedules, the students rehearsed exhaustively, sometimes getting permission to sign out of class, Falvey said. Even creating a simple set — the fence to which Shepard was tied — proved to be a challenge, as they scrounged for supplies when they failed to find donors. Shortly before the first performance, the students found out they would have to work the lighting on their own, and senior America Muratori learned how to operate the lighting board for the two-night production on June 16 and 17.

“I’ve been going to those plays now for close to 20 years,” Lester said. “It was the best performance I’ve ever seen … and the fact that this was handled with such emotion, and that the kids had to go into different characters … it was absolutely, stunningly phenomenal.”

Despite some support from special education teacher’s aide Marcus Quiroga, who has choreographed school productions in the past, Julia Lang-Shapiro, the district’s director of the arts, and Dr. Francine Newman, the high school’s acting principal, Falvey said there was an “overwhelming feeling” that the students were on their own.

“Going through the process, it was kind of like Mission Impossible, or at least a little bit covert,” she said. “We didn’t know if we were going to get shut down at any moment.”

But Newman, who took over as principal last month, said that administrators helped the students through obstacles.

“As with any new student-initiated request, there are challenges that must be addressed,” Newman said in a statement. “High school administrators worked hand in hand with the students to resolve these issues and were incredibly supportive of them throughout the entire process. Again, we congratulate them on their accomplishment and for a fine production of such an important play.”

The performances took place less than a week after the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and Falvey said the shooting highlighted the play’s relevance. She and the crew asked for donations during the performances, and they raised nearly $300 for Equality Florida, a group collecting funds for the Orlando victims and their families.

“The Laramie Project forces us to look at ourselves, to ask tough questions, and to understand that each of us is part of a vulnerable but powerful human circle — that we are capable of creation as well as destruction,” Falvey wrote in the show’s program.

Due to the play’s sensitive subject matter and foul language, Falvey said she and the cast were prepared to fight back if the administration tried to intervene on the night of the performances — citing her past experience with censorship in other productions — but the district did not. “It became so immensely important that we put on the play, that we got through the process and these kids were able to stand on stage and perform, and that they got the message out there,” Falvey said. “They were so passionate and so in it, and it just kind of became the world that we lived in for a couple months.”

Lester said that everyone in attendance was “stunned” by the performance, not only because of the show’s powerful message after the Orlando tragedy, but also by the passion of the students involved. “It seems like there was a very deep connection,” he said, “and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that these kids did it on their own.”