Fantastic Fridays

Today it was much warmer than yesterday, leaving us all rather bemused, but still nice because barn was quite a bit more pleasant. Anyways, the excitement of today was that one of the writers of The Laramie Project came for assembly and gave a talk. The Lramie Project is a play that Putney is putting on about the murder of  Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, in October of 1998. The play itself is a series of interviews based off of actual interviews taken by the Tectonic Theatre in Laramie after the event. It addresses the social climate of the time and homophobia in the area, along with the reaction of the community to the event and how they were perceived as a result of it. It was a wonderful talk, and extremely interesting. He discussed the process of writing the play, which was fascinating in that he was an openly gay man who grew up through the same period of homophobia that produced the horrible murder, and how he went through recording the interviews and then writing the play with the troop from those. I think, perhaps, the most interesting thing was his description of how th ecommunity received the during the first Laramie Project, which was first reformed in 200, and the sort of epilogue play that they went back to do interviews for 10 years later. The first time, Laramie was very glad to have someone come in and talk to the community. The news  stations had come in, made a big deal, and then left, leaving the community in a shell shocked state and ready for Tectonic Theatre to rep in and interview them about the event. He said that once word got around that they were trustworthy and would listen, people would actually be eager to come and talk to them. They were dedicated to staying true to how the character of Laramie, Wyoming, and as a result, those who interviewed people were dedicated to portraying their subject as accurately as possible. In the end, it was a cathartic experience for the community, and all but one of the subjects net reviewed were very pleased with how accurately they were portrayed. However, when the team returned 10 years later, there was great resentment and hostility towards them for portraying Laramie as a homophobic town, and branding them as the place that Matthew Shepard was murdered. As a result of this, the underlying homophobia of the community that continued to exist payed a large role nt he second play. Along side this, for the second play, they were able to interview the two murderers and feature them in the play, which leant an interesting twist. I thought that the most striking thing, however, that he said, wasn't when people asked him whether or not it was their story to tell, you responded yes because, in away, it belonged to all of the gay community. Tough the murder and laramie's reaction were very personal, at that time, all openly gay people experienced discrimination, and so so this manifestation was their own display. The author himself and been beaten with a pipe on a sidewalkinNewYork for openly kissing his boyfriend, and other events like that led to the feeling of indignance and injustice that was addressed by the Laramie Project. I feel privileged to have been ale to attend his talk at the Putney School, and it was simply one more thing to make me realize what a wonderful place it is to exist due to its tolerance and love for its community and world.