The Laramie Project | Ad Astra
I vividly remember when I first read the Laramie Project. I was fourteen and I had found a copy of it in the store room at the back of my high school drama class. I spent all of my morning tea break reading it, and my lunch break. I even did the cliché thing of sneaking it into class and reading it when I thought no one was looking. I remember feeling a plethora of emotions, ranging from hurt, disgusted and frustrated at the human race and whoever it is up there that is supposedly watching over us, to allow something so brutal and animalistic to happen to an innocent boy.
For those who aren’t familiar with the script, the Laramie Project is a piece of verbatim theatre which is based on approximately 200 hours of interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming, following the kidnapping and murder of gay university student, Matthew Sheppard 1998. It’s quite frankly appalling how relevant the content, characters and messages in the play are in our contemporary society.
Ad Astra’s production of this critically acclaimed work was moving, raw and truthful which is a testimony to the powerful direction by Michelle Carey and the performances of the cast who individually often brought ten characters to life. The decision to have the actors seated against the walls of the stage in character, as well as changing their costume items – whether that be a shirt, hat, or scarf – in front of the audience immersed us into Wyoming even further. By having the characters offstage react to the characters in focus, it made the emotional impact more effective and emphasised this notion of the whole town being unified in the outcome of this tragic event and how no one was blameless.
Some stand out imagery for me as was of the vigil, in which the actors lit candles, placed them on the fence and started to sing in unison, as well as the actors protesting in their angel costumes, directly replicating the event that took place. B’Elanna Hill’s lighting design eloquently captured that emotional dialogue in each scene and it was such a delight to have a live musician (Andrew Palmer) creating a live score for the characters’ internal monologues and creating sounds including the slide guitar which set the mood of each location.
The acting was of a very high standard which is what it truthfully needs to be of a show of this calibre. Moments that continued to stay with me once the curtain had closed was Sam Webb’s monologue as Dennis Shepard, the father of the murdered boy. I don’t think there was one dry eye in the audience. Kirsty Pickering was also a stand out as the DJ Shadow who was simply put, way too cool and edgy, as well as Catherine Connolly, the lesbian faculty worker at the university who brought such bubbliness and humour to quite a dark world.
