‘Laramie Project’ illuminates realities of hate and hope
Kayla Hogan remembers walking through the halls of her high school in Naples, FL, and seeing the residue of gay pride stickers on classroom doors. The small reminders of queer representation were scrapped away only 12 hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the controversial “Parental Rights in Education” bill, colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The absence of the four-inch stickers, which read “safe space,” was a reminder of a harsh new reality for queer students like Hogan in the state. Shortly after the March 2022 bill passed, Hogan and her family moved back to Long Island and settled in Glen Cove.
“Any sort of hope that people had that things were going to change there was gone,” Hogan, a Glen Cove high junior, said. “It felt like such a violation.”
Discrimination still shapes the lives of the LGBTQ+ community, but individual experiences are far ranging. To help keep such stories from fading away, Glen Cove high school students like Hogan preformed “The Laramie Project,” a play detailing the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student. The play was performed on Dec. 1, on what would have been Shepard’s 47th birthday.
On Oct. 6, 1998, Shepard was lured from a bar on the outskirts of the University of Wyoming in Laramie by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, who police said pretended to be gay. Shepard was pistol-whipped and left to die, tied to a fence. He succumbed to his injuries on Oct. 12 after being hospitalized in a coma.
“The Laramie Project” uses interviews with hundreds of the city’s residents, intertwined with excerpts from media coverage and diary entries from the actors who originated the play, to create a “documentary theater” portrait of a community grappling with the horrific crime. As what’s known as a verbatim play, “The Laramie Project” calls on its actors to voice ideas that it can be difficult for them to be the conduit. They each must take the stage in a wide range of roles, including some with strong homophobic views and beliefs.
While Shepard’s story is one of violence against a young gay man, his father says it could have easily unfolded against someone based on their race or religion.
This is the first play directed by Jared Ross, the high school’s theatre teacher. For Ross, the play seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce students to a play that affected him deeply when he first performed in it as a teenager.
“It’s such a powerful piece to explore as an actor,” Ross said. “I think this play has such a profound ability to put a mirror up to the audience and really start some necessary conversations. In terms of the artistic merits of the play, it presents our students with such a diverse array of characters, it’s a real challenge for the actor.”
Rebecca Goldaper, the high school’s genders and sexualities alliances club instructor, said the key to combating hate is by asking LGBTQ people questions with genuine curiosity to better understand their feelings and experiences.
“Using people’s pronouns feels small, but it really does make a difference,” Goldaper said. “One of the best ways that we can kind of fight back against hate is through understanding.”
Hogan said she still worries about her friends in Florida who weren’t as lucky to move out of state.
“I think it’s so important for us to tell the story because there’s people in states like Texas and Florida, who want to represent themselves on stage and to be able to put on such a powerful play,” Hogan said. “They can’t even be themselves in their own school settings. We’re so fortunate here to be able to do this and to be able to tell it for the kids who can’t.”
