‘Laramie Project’ energetic, eye-opening look at hate crime

With a cast of hip, energetic performers and an everything-exposed “backstage” set at the Bangor Opera House, director John Clancy not only presents “The Laramie Project,” he ignites it. The show, which runs through Nov. 13, is set in Laramie, Wyo., in the days and year after the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student. Although “Laramie” holds its place on the continuum of staged stories about American community life – “Our Town,” “The Crucible,” the rock opera “Rent,” and “Angels in America” – it also has the distinction of coming closer to being documentary theater because it is based on actual interviews and research done in 1998 and 1999 in Laramie by director and playwright Moises Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project in New York City.

Clancy’s mission is to draw the audience into the passion of the play and deep into the far-reaching implications of this real-life tragedy. The message is that Laramie is our country, our city, our heart. Clancy doesn’t so much open the play as begin a dialogue. While house lights are still up, the performers walk casually onto the sparse show-all-the-backstage-mechanics set, designed by Lex Liang. (Several years ago, a Penobscot Theatre Company production of “Angels in America” featured a similar bare-all approach.) The main focal point is a single lamp with a glaring, bald light bulb that suggests an inquisition, examination and illumination.

Given that Bangor was the site of an earlier hate crime – in 1984, Charles Howard, a young gay man, was thrown into the Kenduskeag River by harassers and drowned – and that the state is still grappling with laws about gay and lesbian rights, there could not be a better time to stage this play. Written in 2001, “Laramie” is one of the most performed plays in the country, and, while it has been produced throughout Maine, this is PTC’s first run with it. The theater is taking it on with remarkable fervor.

First, the ensemble cast, which is made up of local and visiting actors, locates itself in an urban mood and pace. The actors, each of whom plays a variety of roles, delivered their lines with breakneck, sometimes overlapping speed on a preview night last week. They leaped into their lines, their percussive moves drawn more from MTV than from the quieter roads of rural life. Several of the actors vaulted into their characters, charging them with so much electricity the delivery sometimes outshone the message. Adam Kuykendall’s media design – still undergoing technical adjustments at the preview – added edgy and haunting audio effects.

The overall hyperness may nudge the play toward spectacle, but it also spins the point that, while Laramie may be cowboy country, bigotry is ubiquitous: on the prairie, near the river and under the neon lights. To Clancy’s credit, the approach is likely to attract young audiences, and it should. High schools and colleges around the country have produced, banned, criticized, protested and triumphed with the play. Earlier this fall, a school in Oregon canceled a production. Last month in Newton, Mass., an anti-gay Baptist church threatened to picket a local run. “Laramie” is not appropriate for the preteen crowds – mostly because of language and descriptions of violence – but, in this case, its controversy proves its cogency as an artistic mediator for one of the most divisive debates in this country – and not just for young people. To the credit of its creators, and to the PTC artistic team, the play asks viewers to think and act compassionately as members of a democracy.

In part, that’s why the more nuanced performances – Christopher Yeatts as a bartender and a local limo driver, Richard Busser as a hospital CEO and a Catholic priest, and Nathan Raleigh as a gay resident in Laramie – are so compelling. They allow the audience a moment to breathe with the characters and their viewpoints – whether conservative or liberal. Brian Hastert’s portrayals of an impassioned theater student and of Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, both of whom are now serving life sentences in an undisclosed prison, are also engaging and elucidating.

Producing artistic director Scott R.C. Levy has smartly scheduled audience discussions following each performance. Last Wednesday, Elaine Beth Peresluha, minister at the Unitarian Universality Society of Bangor, moderated a discussion after an emotional performance. She asked the audience about its feelings, observations and potential activism against violence, including name-calling and denial. “Things like that don’t happen here,” she said, echoing a disturbing line from the play. “It’s a little different in Bangor, isn’t it? It did happen here. Where does that leave us?” One audience member responded: “It put a light in my mind about hate crimes and how they are useless.”

The light is one that PTC is turning on with fearless brightness in a civic and artistic effort to expose the shadows.

Penobscot Theatre Company will present “The Laramie Project” through Nov. 13 at the Bangor Opera House on Main Street. Members from various organizations, including Eastern Maine AIDS Network, Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence and the Howard Foundation, will moderate audience discussions after each show. For information and tickets, call 942-3333.