Good Neighbors

Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project is American propaganda. In an earnest attempt to understand the meanings behind the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was brutally beaten to death and strung up on a fence by two men, Kaufman and his theater company traveled to Laramie, Wyo., to interview the locals to discover "the various ideologies and beliefs prevailing" in the town's culture after the event. In his preface to the play, Kaufman writes that, "by paying careful attention in moments like this to people's words, one is able to hear the way these prevailing ideas affect not only individual lives but also the culture at large."

This approach was successful for Kaufman in Gross Indecency, in which the playwright pored over the words of eminent Victorians to reach some striking discoveries about the age that actively sought Oscar Wilde's downfall. Yet when seeking the truth behind the destruction of a modern-day young queer, Kaufman lacks the necessary analytical distance to be honest. He becomes corrupted by compassion for the just-plain-folk of Laramie, and his project becomes exonerative rather than insightful. The locals cry throughout that they are good, decent folk in a good, decent town, (our collective post-Sept. 11 demands to be taken as a nation of lambs blameless of global crimes now ironically inform this work).

The townsfolk beg Kaufman to have the "truth" known, when what they are really asking is to have the myth of their lives, values and land validated, and Kaufman seems willing to mediate that message through his "documentary." "Good people, lots of space." In ART's production, director Jon Kretzu continues this, compromising his audience by having cast members proffer good ol' banana bread in an ingratiating style before the play.

The myth of rural America is Jeffersonian. We crave belief in the third president's vision of gentleman farmers sowing and reaping to the rhythms of Hesiod while actively participating in the construction of democracy. But rural America is instead a vast federation of benighted, isolated and intolerant minds. Unlike Kaufman's doctored-drama, the documentary film Paradise Lost reveals that in the God-fearin' town of West Memphis, Ark., the rape and mutilation of three 8-year-old boys was a cultural event. That is to say that the question of assigning culpability is immaterial: In a culture debased by violence and ignorance such horror can only be produced. Is Laramie any different? Is America? Who in their right mind would crawl into a pickup truck between two beer-sweating tire-changers? Shepard's only crime was a naïve faith in American civilization.

The interviewees, for the most part, strike one as good small towners who have been housebroken from peppering conversations with "nigger," "fag" and excerpts from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in polite company. One of the more liberal Laramie voices boasts that there's plenty of gay men in Wyoming, but they're real he-men types who will "kick you in your fucking ass." Hardly an advertisement for a functioning society, but such is life in the heartland. The one truly brave voice in this piece belongs to a young Muslim woman, Zubaida Ula, who is outspoken in rightfully placing the crime at the town's door, and who delivers a simple and eloquent argument against executing Shepard's killers. Most of the good villagers of Laramie who raised these two boys, of course, demand that barbaric punishments be meted out to them.

Oddly, of all the characters, Kretzu directed Andres Alcalá to play Ula almost as a cartoon in the first scene. But that was only the most egregious of performance choices, aside from Vana O'Brien's trademarked burbling routine, an upstaging device that comes easier to her than acting. Otherwise, the cast treats these three long, uncathartic hours with the required solemnity, with only Linda Williams-Janke commanding attention with her honest portrayals. Tim Stapleton's beautiful and thoughtful set, a square lot of dark earth bordered with rough, unvarnished wood, attempts to do what the play fails to: show a piece of raw land fenced in on itself.

In the final moments of the play, the actors line up fencelike as if at the murder site, a picture of solidarity and shared values. Kaufman's last line, after more special pleading from locals to "tell the story right," describes the "sparkling lights of Laramie, Wyoming," as if it were, perhaps, a new beacon of enlightenment, a new morning in America. But the reality of rural America is otherwise. The sparkling light is a false dawn, and good fences still make good neighbors. Just ask Brandon Tina (Richardson County, Neb.), James Byrd (Jasper, Texas), Loni Kai Okaruru (Hillsboro, Ore.)....

Artists Repertory Theatre, 1516 SW Alder St., 241-1278. 7 pm Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes June 30. $15 (students)-$28.

"We do not believe any more in the superior innocence and virtue of a rural population."

WWeek 2015