Camille Rhoden addresses the audience on behalf of the people of Laramie behind them, emphasizing that “we are like this.”
This past weekend, while visiting First Reformed Church in Little Falls, New Jersey, I was simultaneously transported to Laramie, Wyoming in 1998/1999. Friends of Room for All, the New Jersey based theater company OffBook Productions is in the midst of their run of The Laramie Project. With a cast of 25, they portray how the murder of Matthew Shepard impacted the entire community, including the perpetrators, and the American people. Co-directed by Laura Iacometta and Jess Katz, the moments of the show are masterfully linked as the cast remains present in the room through every transition.You have 2 more opportunities to see this provocative show, on November 1st and 2nd, 2024. Tickets are available at www.offbookproductions.ludus.com.
On October 6, 1998, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson approached Shepard, a 21 year old gay man at a Laramie bar called the Fireside Lounge. They offered him a ride home, and proceeded to take him to a remote area of the plains to rob, beat and torture him. They tied him to a split rail fence and left him there. Matthew himself is not portrayed in the play, and neither is the crime shown, though details are mentioned by the roles of law enforcement and medical professionals.
As the aftermath of the murder unfolded, the people of Laramie had to look themselves in the face and realize “we are like this,” owning the role they’d played in raising the perpetrators. McKinney and Henderson, played by Justin Del Valle and Ryan Green were defended by some and condemned by others, and ultimately taken to trial, where the death penalty was on the table. It’s important to note that this script is not a dramatization– a team from the Tectonic Theater Project, headed by Moises Kaufman conducted over 200 interviews over the course of multiple visits to the town.
The show is staged along the long wall of the community space in the church, with a backdrop of the Wyoming plains and a simple set of benches, chairs, boxes, and lanterns. On the small stage to our left, framed by drawn curtains but present throughout the performance was the fence, where Matthew had been tied and left to die. “I wanted it to haunt people,” director Laura Iacometta told me. For their bows, each cast member approached the fence to lay a flower before it in remembrance of Matthew. “Before I’d blocked anything else,” she shared, “I knew how I wanted to do this.” Shepard was in a coma he never came out of when he was discovered on the fence 18 hours after the attack, by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow. Actor Drew Jay McGuinness came full circle from the tormented “why me, why couldn’t I do more” to Kreifels’ later understanding of his role in bringing Shepard help, so that he would be among family when he died six days later.
I’m a lifelong student of LGBTQIA+ History, and while I had read the script in undergrad, this incredible cast and crew brought all of us inside of this tumultuous time and taught me details that never sank in before. Most striking was the spectrum of views professed at the time by the town’s faith leaders, that both helped and harmed the community and our country while justice was being sought. Emily Freling’s Romaine Paterson, Matt’s friend, and Ray Hoffman’s Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church vividly captured the conflict, as well as the refusal to allow hate to diminish compassion. Real footage of the Angel Action, which Romaine designed to protect the Shepard family from seeing the slur-filled signs of the WBC during the trial, is cast over the tirade of the hate preacher.
We walked away emboldened to do our part to carry on the legacy of acceptance and compassion through fighting for our young rights, with an earnest imploration to vote. It’s important to note that the federal “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” wasn’t made law until October 2009. On October 26, 2018, just over 20 years after his death, Shepard’s ashes were interred at the crypt of Washington National Cathedral, in a ceremony presided over by the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson. Russell Henderson was just denied a commutation of his sentence last month.
Room for All is grateful to have been hosted by FRC Little Falls on Saturday, October 26th for a presentation of our Responding to Anti-LGBTQIA+ Rhetoric Training. Attendees included cast and crew of the show, who were in conversation with one another to better equip themselves for the times when this hate still emerges.