The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

10 years of change, reflection, even regression; The Laramie Project

By Barbara Morrison Editor-in-Cheif

Last night, Westford Academy was one of 100 locations around the country and 150 locations around the world, in a total of 12 countries, to put on the first ever staged reading of the Laramie Project: 10 years Later. The event started off with speeches from famous actress Glenn Close, and the script’s writers, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, broadcast live from New York.
The play is an epilogue to the first Laramie Project. Both shows are compiled entirely from interviews in and around Laramie by the Tectonic Theater Project, the diaries of company members, and other found documents.

He went on to discuss the event, saying that performing the play at the same time as 150 other locations around the world made it an especially powerful experience.

“The most remarkable thing to me, which I don’t think we could have accounted for, was this sense of connectivity to this global community. And I felt that,” said Towers.

Just before the ten year anniversary of Mathew Shepard’s death, a young gay man who was the victim of a brutal and fatal hate crime in the town of Laramie, Wyoming in October of 1998, the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to conduct more interviews both with characters from the first Laramie Project, and new characters.

The epilogue focused heavily on what, if any change, had occurred in the last 11 years, and the rumors about the “real” reasons behind Mathew Shepard’s death, spread by a 20/20 program in 2004.

In the 20/20 program, it was claimed that Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were motivated by drugs and money, rather than bias towards the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender] community.

Interviews with local police from the time of the murder included in the play disprove this rumor.

“Their (Aaron Mckinney and Russell Henderson) own statement was, they went into a bathroom, they hatched the plan to pretend that they were gay, to try to befriend Matt, get him isolated,” said Dave O’Malley, an investigating officer on Shepard’s case.

The other investigating officer on the case, Rob Debree supported O’Malley’s statements by discussing why he recognized the murder as a hate crime.

“Robbery would have taken seconds. They went beyond that…I mean this goes way beyond the wallet,” said Rob Debree, the other investigating officer, “When McKinney was in the detention facility he had no problem telling everybody he had killed the fagot…he was his own little hero.”

Residents of Laramie and members of the community spoke to why they thought these new theories about the crime’s motivation had become popular.

“Shame is a funny thing…we start making excuses,” said Reggie Kaufman, the officer who found Shepard at the fence he was tied to and left at the night of his beating.

According to Michael Towers, director and actor of the Laramie Project at Westford Academy, the play achieved its focus was able to disprove the 20/20 rumors.

The political advancements made in the last 11 years were also discussed by the characters. Many expressed frustration over a lack of advances, for instance, there are still no statues concerning hate crimes based on gender identity or sexual orientation in Wyoming, and as of now the University of Wyoming in Laramie has no benefits for employee’s same sex partners.

“It was really scary to see that America hasn’t changed that much,” said senior Jared Joyce who saw the production at Westford Academy.

He echoed much of the other audience member’s feedback saying that the interview with Shepard’s killer, McKinney, was “chilling.”

“It’s [hate crimes and the persecution of the LGBT community] still happening…Dennis said it best, ’10 years of change, no progress,” said Shepard’s mother turned activist, Judy Shepard.

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