Well, this is officially my first blog ever. While reading The Laramie Project, it took me a while to get into it, which was probably my fault as I was trying to read in a room where my roommate and her boyfriend were watching some movie about vampires and werewolves and such, but that's beside the point. What did I learn about writing plays?? I am very familiar with the story of Matthew Shepard, mostly because I remember when it happened. When I began to read the play by Moises Kaufman, I found that it was very scattered and hard to follow, and throughout the whole play I had a hard time making a distinction between the smaller characters. As I continued to read I found that the style in which the play was written was the best way to portray the actual people and locations at which this horrible event occurred. Overall i was very pleased with the structure and format of the play.
There are a few things that I found very interesting about the structure of this play. At first look, I thought it was interesting that it was in three acts, all of different length. I personally did not find a clear distinction as to why they were split up that way. The story is so choppy and jumps around from character to character, that I feel that it would have been possible to break it up into two acts, both of equal length. Then after a second look I realize why Kaufman split it up the way he did. There are three sections to Matthew’s story. There is the initial crime, where he is found, brought into the hospital and the whole world hears about what has happened. The second section is about his death and the response of the world. The third section is the resolution, the trial of the accused, along with statements from the people who cared most about Matthew.
Another thing I learned about writing is that they easiest way to portray the feelings and thoughts about real life individuals is to use their actual words. I found the parts where the actual actors were talking about their experience with the interviews kind of boring because it pulls the reader out of the chronological line of the actual story. Because of the direct quotes and characters that are real people, the personal accounts are extremely heart breaking even just on the page. I cannot even imagine the emotion involved with watching this play on a stage. The statements of the people who had direct contact with this horrible event: the kid who found him, of the accused, of Matthew’s father, of the policemen and doctors who dealt with him , etc were extremely powerful. However, I also found a lot of power in the statements of other people Matthew’s age, like Matt Galloway, Jedadiah Schultz, and Zubaida Ula. They each felt like they had a connection to Matthew, even though only Matt Galloway was the only one who knew him personally. I found it interesting that such minor characters to the actual story line could have such a powerful interesting insight and opinions to the story itself. For example, Jedadiah Schultz did not necessarily agree with a homosexual lifestyle, but for some reason had a great connection to Angels in America, which made him feel closer to Matthew.
I found the end of the play very haunting. This was the one place that I loved that Kaufman used the insight of the people from the theater company conducting the interviews. One of the things that had stuck in their minds was that Doc had said that Laramie sparkles. Doc explained that Matt had told him this one night on a drive, and I think the most haunting part of this play is Doc’s last quote: “Matt was right there in that spot, and I can just picture his eyes, I can just picture what he was seeing. The last thing he saw on this earth was the sparkling lights” (99). I love that Kaufman leaves us feeling haunted. He could have written some concluding monologue talking about the amazing response of the people of the world in result of Matthew’s death. He could have written some cheesy ending about how Matthew’s story will live on through this play and such, but instead, Kaufman leaves us as one of his crew members looks in the rearview of the car and sees the sparkling lights.
