The Laramie Project - Performance

On the 19th of April and the 20th of April, we had our performance on The Laramie Project! Finally after 10 days of intense rehearsals, we are proud to present what we have achieved to the whole school. During the 10 days, we have a lot of difficult times, we even thought of abandoning the show, but we have overcame all the barricades. The show is a great success, we got audiences crying, and of course, standing ovation all over the place at the end.

The Laramie Project - My Characters (Applying Stanislavski's system)

As requested by our teacher, we need to use the methods in the Stanislavski's system we have learnt into the characters that we have to play.

The Laramie Project - My Characters (Introduction)

Today, we received a character lists that we will be acting, for me it is Moises Kaufman, the director of the company; Matt Mickelson, owner of the Fireside bar (where Matthew Shepherd went before death); Gil Engen, a Laramie local; and also a skin head who lead the singing of "Amazing Grace" during Matthew's funeral.

Moises Kaufman:

Wiki:
Moisés Kaufman (born November 21, 1963) is a playwright, director and founder of Tectonic Theater Project. He is the author of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, 33 Variations and is perhaps best known for writing The Laramie Project with other members of Tectonic Theater Project.

My first impression:
After reading the script, I realize he is an interesting character, he has a lot of jokes throughout the play, but he is not involved in many of the interviews, he mostly appear in journal entries of the theatre company members in between scenes, unfortunately that means most of his line is not that important to the flow of the story, due to time constrains, both on the time to prepare and length of the play, most of his lines are cut, he will only appear at the beginning of the play, to bring an introduction of why the company decided to go to Laramie for their play.

Matt Mickelson:

Facts: He is the owner of the Fireside bar, where Mr. Shepard was lured away by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. He sold the bar and it was renamed. He said, “I put it up for sale two weeks later — it was a ghost town,”.

My first impression:
The most significant part of this character in the play is a speech of his plan for the bar when two of the theatre company members interviewed him. In the dialogue, he showed his pride of his ancestors who owns the Old Blue Front Opera House and the Good Time Emporium, and the bar is the first step towards them.











Gil Engen:

He is a Laramie local in his 60s that thinks the incident is just a "bad apple" that appear once in a while, not an indication that gay people are being discriminated. He got only one line in our concentrated version of the play.

The Laramie Project - Introduction

There is a tradition of having a show by first year theatre group students at the end of the term, before the exam, this year is not an exception, we are doing a concentrated version of The Laramie Project. The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, the story is about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder was denounced as a hate crime and brought attention to the lack of hate crimes laws in various states, including Wyoming. Unlike many other plays, the play is not created by the author, it draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries, and published news reports.
Unlike other first year play performed before, we only have 10 days to prepare for this show, which is our teacher's new record! In the next one and a half week, we will spend most of our evening on stage rehearsing , I hope the show will be successful!