Reading The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later as Theatrical Rebuttal

초록

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of the Tectonic Theater Project’s The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. Due to its perceived status as a coda to the Tectonic’s successful earlier play, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later has received little scholarly treatment. The Tectonic’s response needs to be understood in terms of a different cultural moment and a radically changed discursive landscape. In response to a conservative turn in the political climate, the Matthew Shepard murder was being rewritten as a drug crime rather than a hate crime. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later stages a rebuttal to this conservative revisionism by employing the dramaturgical tactics of documentary theater. On the one hand, the Tectonic exposes the unreliability of the perpetrators’ testimony by staging firsthand interviews with Russel Henderson and Aaron McKinney. On the other hand, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later stages discourse analysis that teaches the audience to adopt a more critical approach to the stories that we tell. Ultimately, the critical lens is applied to the Tectonic’s own participation in the creation of the Matthew Shepard story. More sobering than the earlier treatment of Laramie, the follow-up play brings the audience closer to the realities of shifting and competing discourses.

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