The Laramie Project

A month after gay undergrad Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence and beaten to death near Laramie, Wyoming, Kaufman and his theater troupe descended upon the town with tape recorders in hand: What did the townspeople think about Shepard’s death? Now, almost a decade later, another question lingers: Of all acts of homophobic violence, why did Shepard’s murder—with those iconic grainy shots of his cherubic young white face—stick in the media’s craw? It’s interesting, and telling, that this second question goes unasked here. Documentarians like Kaufman take the academic theory that an observer is always implicated in what’s observed and use it to justify something else—placing the observer at the center of what’s observed. As Kaufman and company make themselves characters in their docudrama, what ostensibly serves Shepard’s story ends up feeling like it serves his tsking biographers.

Self-involved but not self-scrutinizing, Project trades on regional condescension. Here I am in the wilds, it seems to say, and just look at the religious folks, good ol’ boys, trashy girls and a dish the natives call chicken-fried steak. More than a two-dimensional, arm’s-length account of small-town American mores could’ve been achieved, but that would’ve required not just filmic splicing of snapshot interviews, but a play borne out of a generosity of imagination rather than a head-shaking sermonizing. Anzevino’s cast, though rushed, gives the script the earnestness it demands, but it’s curious why Theo Ubique, so good at charmingly scruffy musicals, has devoted its efforts to this wilting documentary.—Novid Parsi