What did audiences think of The Laramie Project? Click here to read audience comments.
Click here to read how The Laramie Project went at the 2022 Victorian Drama League awards!
Production team:
- Director: Amy Anselmi
- Producer: Luke Mitton
- Set Design: Amy Anselmi
- Sound Design: Amy Anselmi
- Lighting Design: Shane Podolski
- Stage Manager: Luke Mitton
Cast: Adam Roche, Josh Lloyd, Simon Risson, Larissa Riddell, Jillian Pearce, Amy Anselmi, Malachi O’Brien, Annika Livingstone, Alayna Toporsizek, Jayden Robertson, Beau Ladlow, Carl Gasparini
Director’s Message
This is a story about a young man, and yet it isn’t about that at all. The Laramie Project manages to be both a small story about individuals and their motivations, their desires and their fears, and a huge story that speaks to our collective capacity for forgiveness, compassion and understanding, as well as our most human failings and our ability to descend into hatred and bigotry.
Every single word – every “uh”, “well” and “you know” – was spoken by someone important to this story. The dialogue in The Laramie Project is drawn from people as devastatingly close to the case as Matthew Shepard’s father Denis and his best friend Romaine, and from those with only peripheral, self-motivated interests such as the Reverend Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church. In between, we hear the real words spoken by ranchers from Laramie, students from the University of Wyoming, teachers, doctors, police officers, limousine drivers, shop owners, mechanics and many more. In fact, the twelve actors you’ll see on stage tonight portray exactly sixty-seven different people from Laramie and beyond.
So why are we staging this play here? I would ask you to consider the towns of Horsham and Laramie. Like Laramie, we are families who have been on the surrounding land for generations. We are newcomers to the region drawn by the family-friendly lifestyle and the beautiful natural landscape. We are students, teachers and hospital staff. We are artists, business owners and tradespeople. We are people of faith. We are atheists. All this diversity is underpinned by disparate economic circumstances and a kaleidoscope of strongly held opinions on every conceivable topic. It’s all here in Horsham, just as it is in Laramie.
Smart Artz Theatre Inc. believes that viewing live theatre has the power to change lives, to increase empathy and compassion for our fellow humans, and to open our eyes to different ways of being and thinking.
The process of bringing The Laramie Project to the stage has been a long one. Like other theatre companies, Smart Artz Theatre Inc has had to make some hard decisions about how to proceed in the face of the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic. We started this show almost three years ago, had our first cast in place at the end of 2019 and we had just blocked the final scene of the play when the Victorian government announced the very first lockdown in March 2020. We cancelled the remaining rehearsals and the show went into hiatus as we optimistically told ourselves the pandemic would be over in a few months.
We scheduled an October 2020 season, and then when Delta hit, the Horsham Town Hall offered us the opportunity to record a live streamed version of the play that could be screened at a later date for an audience. True to form in the covid-era, we held a Zoom meeting with the cast, and the overwhelming feeling was that in order to do justice to this play, we needed to stage it with a live audience. So another postponement it was, and during 2021 we sadly said goodbye to five original cast members – Madeline Dymke, Jonny Dutaillis, Catherine Bates, Ethan Jolly and Fiona Blair. I would like to acknowledge the contributions they made that helped shape the show you see tonight.
The 2022 cast is a different but equally wonderful collection of humans who all bring their life experience, sensitivity, compassion and skill to this play. We have leaned heavily on our back-up team of Grace Risson and Teresa Bottoms – as rehearsal stand-ins and prompts they have been utterly selfless in their support of the cast and crew. Finally, as director, I want to express my gratitude to the entire cast and production team, and the Smart Artz Theatre Inc. committee, for the kind-heartedness, curiosity, generosity and the sense of genuine and thoughtful collaboration that has infused every single part of this process.
To the people of Laramie, Wyoming, to the Shepard family, and to Matthew, I hope that we have done you justice.
