Queer(er) Approaches to The Laramie Project: An Autoethnographic Account

Abstract

Queer(er) Approaches to The Laramie Project: An Autoethnographic Account Nicolas Shannon Savard (bio) As one of the most-produced plays in the country, the Tectonic Theater Project’s 2000 docu-drama, The Laramie Project, has become a staple of theatre curricula and educational production at the high school and collegiate level in the United States. The play’s inclusion in our seasons and classrooms becomes even more significant when we consider that it is the first, and often only, representation of LGBTQ people and issues that the vast majority of our students encounter in an academic setting. The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s The 2017 National School Climate Survey found that just under 65 percent of students graduate high school without ever having discussed or read about LGBTQ people or issues in any class (Kosciw et al. 58). The Laramie Project’s sustained popularity indicates that schools are leaning on the theatre to bridge that representational gap. The way it has been taken up as the gay play presents a problem, in that it can perpetuate uncontested narratives of victimization and what youth theatre scholars Manon van de Water and Annie Giannini call the discourse of the “troubled gay youth” (103). However, given this play’s place in the curriculum as the singular point of contact for many students, it is vital that we create opportunities for students to engage with the content to the fullest capacity, with a critical eye, and with explicit connections to the world we inhabit together. My critique here is not intended to discredit the valuable work that the Tectonic Theater Project has done with Laramie, but rather to hold my own community of theatre educators and practitioners to a more rigorous standard in our conversations with our students about the piece. I advocate a shift in questioning away from “could this happen here?” My own lived experience as a queer transgender person; scholarship coming out of queer, feminist, and transgender studies; and the alarming rates of violence against the LGBTQ community, particularly transwomen of color, has taught me that it can and is currently happening all over the world.1 Instead, I propose broader alternatives such as “what can we do to create a culture and systems equipped to stop homophobic violence? How are heteronormativity and homophobia operating culturally and systemically within the world presented in Laramie, and how can we recognize this in our own communities? Informed by theories and pedagogies developed by Jasbir Puar, bell hooks, Cathy Cohen, and Sarah Ahmed, this essay will provide an autoethnographic account of the pedagogical strategies I have developed over the course of four semesters to engage my own students in a queer-feminist examination of The Laramie Project and our own Midwestern community. I will begin with a critical analysis of the most popular pedagogical tools accessible to those teaching the play. The autoethnographic portion of the essay will explore the challenges I faced as an instructor in attempting to move the discussion surrounding Laramie beyond a surface-level reading, some particularly productive moments, and methods my students and I found of extending the lessons of the piece beyond the class time specifically dedicated to it. Surface-level readings of Laramie lead to post-show talk-backs and the classroom discussions surrounding the play that run the risk of becoming reductive rather than deeply critical. I have had dozens of my own students take away the message that “nobody deserves to be murdered,” ignoring the specific cultural circumstances that led to Matthew Shepard’s death and focusing on the victim [End Page 221] rather than the perpetrators. On the other hand, I have noticed a tendency among students and audience members alike to create distance both temporally and geographically: “Wow, we’ve come a long way since the 1990s” or “But that couldn’t happen here.” The latter reaction reflects the same differentiation that Jill Dolan noted in her explanation of how the original New York production, in her view, failed to create a utopian performative for its audience. The 2000 production, she writes, “miscalculates some strategies, most flagrantly maintaining the binary of rural/urban that keeps the tragedy distanced and ‘othered...