Virginia Press - Journal Entry 9 - The Laramie Project and the Artist's Aesthetic Experience

 This semester I have stayed extremely busy as a part of the ensemble for TheaterCNU's production of The Laramie Project. The Tectonic Theater project went to Laramie, Wyoming, to conduct interviews in the wake of the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Though this initial call is motivated by something so grim and gruesome, I think I began to understand the aesthetic call that manifested as they continued speaking to the people of Laramie. 

The Tectonic Theater project decided to write their piece as Verbatim Theater, which meant that the play is entirely constructed out of the words of real people. Rather than focus their piece on hate and unrest, the Laramie Project became about the real human people of the town, and the ways in which they were profoundly changed by this event. I think the aesthetic experience which jolted Moises Kaufman and his team was not the inherent aesthetic beauty of nature, but the ultimate beauty of the duality of man. Man is capable of doing atrocious things, but we are also capable of great love and community. We have the ability to come together. 

Dennis Shepard's statement to the court cites that Matthew, in his final moments, had aspects of nature, such as the wind and sun, aspects of humanity, such as the lights of the town, and God: the meeting of the two. The aesthetic experience which inspired the Laramie Project must have been the vastness of seeing from above and within the connection between humans and the world around us, including our fellow humans. 

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