The first sentence of the Laramie Project is not a description of Matthew Shepard’s beating or of Laramie, Wyoming, rather the play opens by detailing the construction of the play by the Tectonic Theater Company, ending with the statement that the “play you are about to see is edited from those interviews, as well as journal entries from members of the company and other found texts.” Thus, the play opens with something akin to the “Acknowledgments” section at the beginning of a non-fiction book; the project’s methodology is briefly explained and the audience is assured that the material about to be related were rooted in evidence. Creative invention is not admitted, merely construction. Throughout our pre-rehearsal table work we talked a lot about the nature and mission of documentary theater. After working with the text for several weeks I have been struck by the seductive nature of the central claim made by Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Company in the opening lines of the play—this is truth—and I find it interesting, as someone interested in playwriting, that the strength of this claim relies upon assurances of factuality rather than creativity.
Larmaie does not open with a direct-address informing the audience that they are about to see a play about a town dealing with hate. Instead, it opens by telling the audience they are about to see a series of dramatized textual records—a compilation of fact. Reading and watching Angels in America as well as reading Execution of Justice for class was really useful in that the both plays represent an alternative way of dealing with a factual event. Angels is fiction, but it deals with real issues and even some real people. It’s story is invented, but it is not fantastical. Execution of Justice is a piece of documentary theater like Larmaie, except it clearly departs from truth at times. Emily Mann’s opening monologues frame the documentary evidence about to be dramatized, but also places the audience in a theatrical world. They are informed by the play’s opening that what they are about to see does not claim to be truth, but rather a riff on the truth. Angels is a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes” and Execution is essential a critique of an event. They are both more a mediation on the truth than a statement of it. But Laramie is different. Even though Laramie is clearly a constructed text with a clear critique of the truth the play attempts to assuage this belief.
At the same time as I am working on The Laramie Project, I am in the midst of working on my senior distinction project. For my distinction project I am writing an historical drama about politics in the early American republic in general and the divide and eventual duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in particular. In writing the play I have looked at the primary sources I could find (letters, diaries, and speeches) as well as secondary historical sources (biographies and historical accounts of the time) and plays (primarily dramas in which the playwright tackles a concept, character or event in history). Thus, I entered Laramie already thinking a lot about how one presents an account of something or someone real onstage. I have felt the burden that I’m sure the Tectonic Theater Company members felt to “say it correct.” Even though my characters are long dead, I tread carefully around them. My greatest concern was not with taking liberties, but in taking accidental liberties. For me, it was important that I learn as much as possible so that omissions could be a more deliberate exercise. I also felt that even if the audience did not know something, the fact I knew it would ensure that the “truth” was respected. The Tectonic Theater Company’s omission of certain layers of truth does not offend me because I understand the demands of the dramatizing history more so than I did several months ago.
-Ben Bergmann
The first sentence of the Laramie Project is not a description of Matthew Shepard’s beating or of Laramie, Wyoming, rather the play opens by detailing the construction of the play by the Tectonic Theater Company, ending with the statement that the “play you are about to see is edited from those interviews, as well as journal entries from members of the company and other found texts.” Thus, the play opens with something akin to the “Acknowledgments” section at the beginning of a non-fiction book; the project’s methodology is briefly explained and the audience is assured that the material about to be related were rooted in evidence. Creative invention is not admitted, merely construction. Throughout our pre-rehearsal table work we talked a lot about the nature and mission of documentary theater. After working with the text for several weeks I have been struck by the seductive nature of the central claim made by Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Company in the opening lines of the play—this is truth—and I find it interesting, as someone interested in playwriting, that the strength of this claim relies upon assurances of factuality rather than creativity.
Larmaie does not open with a direct-address informing the audience that they are about to see a play about a town dealing with hate. Instead, it opens by telling the audience they are about to see a series of dramatized textual records—a compilation of fact. Reading and watching Angels in America as well as reading Execution of Justice for class was really useful in that the both plays represent an alternative way of dealing with a factual event. Angels is fiction, but it deals with real issues and even some real people. It’s story is invented, but it is not fantastical. Execution of Justice is a piece of documentary theater like Larmaie, except it clearly departs from truth at times. Emily Mann’s opening monologues frame the documentary evidence about to be dramatized, but also places the audience in a theatrical world. They are informed by the play’s opening that what they are about to see does not claim to be truth, but rather a riff on the truth. Angels is a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes” and Execution is essential a critique of an event. They are both more a mediation on the truth than a statement of it. But Laramie is different. Even though Laramie is clearly a constructed text with a clear critique of the truth the play attempts to assuage this belief.
At the same time as I am working on The Laramie Project, I am in the midst of working on my senior distinction project. For my distinction project I am writing an historical drama about politics in the early American republic in general and the divide and eventual duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in particular. In writing the play I have looked at the primary sources I could find (letters, diaries, and speeches) as well as secondary historical sources (biographies and historical accounts of the time) and plays (primarily dramas in which the playwright tackles a concept, character or event in history). Thus, I entered Laramie already thin
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The first sentence of the Laramie Project is not a description of Matthew Shepard’s beating or of Laramie, Wyoming, rather the play opens by detailing the construction of the play by the Tectonic Theater Company, ending with the statement that the “play you are about to see is edited from those interviews, as well as journal entries from members of the company and other found texts.” Thus, the play opens with something akin to the “Acknowledgments” section at the beginning of a non-fiction book; the project’s methodology is briefly explained and the audience is assured that the material about to be related were rooted in evidence. Creative invention is not admitted, merely construction. Throughout our pre-rehearsal table work we talked a lot about the nature and mission of documentary theater. After working with the text for several weeks I have been struck by the seductive nature of the central claim made by Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Company in the opening lines of the play—this is truth—and I find it interesting, as someone interested in playwriting, that the strength of this claim relies upon assurances of factuality rather than creativity.
Larmaie does not open with a direct-address informing the audience that they are about to see a play about a town dealing with hate. Instead, it opens by telling the audience they are about to see a series of dramatized textual records—a compilation of fact. Reading and watching Angels in America as well as reading Execution of Justice for class was really useful in that the both plays represent an alternative way of dealing with a factual event. Angels is fiction, but it deals with real issues and even some real people. It’s story is invented, but it is not fantastical. Execution of Justice is a piece of documentary theater like Larmaie, except it clearly departs from truth at times. Emily Mann’s opening monologues frame the documentary evidence about to be dramatized, but also places the audience in a theatrical world. They are informed by the play’s opening that what they are about to see does not claim to be truth, but rather a riff on the truth. Angels is a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes” and Execution is essential a critique of an event. They are both more a mediation on the truth than a statement of it. But Laramie is different. Even though Laramie is clearly a constructed text with a clear critique of the truth the play attempts to assuage this belief.
At the same time as I am working on The Laramie Project, I am in the midst of working on my senior distinction project. For my distinction project I am writing an historical drama about politics in the early American republic in general and the divide and eventual duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in particular. In writing the play I have looked at the primary sources I could find (letters, diaries, and speeches) as well as secondary historical sources (biographies and historical accounts of the time) and plays (primarily dramas in which the playwright tackles a concept, character or event in history). Thus, I entered Laramie already thinking a lot about how one presents an account of something or someone real onstage. I have felt the burden that I’m sure the Tectonic Theater Company members felt to “say it correct.” Even though my characters are long dead, I tread carefully around them. My greatest concern was not with taking liberties, but in taking accidental liberties. For me, it was important that I learn as much as possible so that omissions could be a more deliberate exercise. I also felt that even if the audience did not know something, the fact I knew it would ensure that the “truth” was respected. The Tectonic Theater Company’s omission of certain layers of truth does not offend me because I understand the demands of the dramatizing history more so than I did several months ago.
king a lot about how one presents an account of something or someone real onstage. I have felt the burden that I’m sure the Tectonic Theater Company members felt to “say it correct.” Even though my characters are long dead, I tread carefully around them. My greatest concern was not with taking liberties, but in taking accidental liberties. For me, it was important that I learn as much as possible so that omissions could be a more deliberate exercise. I also felt that even if the audience did not know something, the fact I knew it would ensure that the “truth” was respected. The Tectonic Theater Company’s omission of certain layers of truth does not offend me because I understand the demands of the dramatizing history more so than I did several months ago.
Ben —
A thought-provoking post. I really like the way you cast Act 1’s narration as the acknowledgments section of a non-fiction book. I’m intrigued by so many things; here are just a couple in detail.
1. “It’s [Angel’s] story is invented, but it is not fantastical.” I think Kushner plays with all possible definitions of “Fantasia” in his subtitle: a) medley of familiar themes with variations and interludes, b) idiosyncratic form, c) unreal/exotic. The appearance of angels on stage — esp. in Perestroika –demands that the fantastical be confronted and examined by the audience not just consumed as spectacle. It seems that you are arguing that Kushner (and Mann) achieves a level of Brechtian historicization that Laramie does/can not? Except, perhaps for us doing the play *now* a full 12 years after Shepard’s death and 10 years after the first production of Laramie. How (or should) we play upon the distance we have between the events then and now? As a playwright, do you think we’d be infringing on Kaufman and Tectonic’s original intentions to expose or redirect the claims to truth they make? Do you think making our “theatrical” moments (the media cacophany, the funeral, the vigil) more *fantastical* would actually help *break* the illusion of historical truth that Laramie courts?
2. I didn’t know you were working on a historical drama for your project. What drew you to that subject matter? It was so helpful for me to hear Maude’s version of how and why Moises was drawn to the events in Wyoming and Matthew’s story. Of course, as your Matt Galloway knows, hindsight is 20/20, but I wonder whether its possible to understand your motivations in the moment of making a work of art and whether those motivations (the elusive playwright’s “intention” that gets invoked in the theater) are as important to understand as you look for/invoke supporting historical or ethnographic work. In Gross Indecency, Kaufman includes an interview with an “academic” to discuss the approach of the play, right in the middle of it happening. I think of it as the play’s on-stage debate with itself. In Laramie, I find it interesting that once introduced, the Tectonic members become more like conduits for stories rather than interrogating those stories in front of our eyes. And, of course, it’s always a question of how many levels of critique could one work possibly contain. I just wonder whether the distance on the Oscar Wilde trial produced a kind of freedom to interrogate documents and history in a way that the immediacy of (and investment in) the events in Wyoming could not … at least not for Kaufman & company at that time. Of course, as I read *Ten Years Later* and found almost the same kind of pace, patterns, and politics at work, I wonder if Kaufman would *ever* consider taking a kind of interrogatory/critical tone with this event, especially since the first play has become so synonymous with the event itself.
–Jules
Hello Ben,
It’s very interesting to listen over your shoulder as you think aloud about your senior distinction project and how your questions about Laramie and your own work overlap. You mentioned a few things that piqued my own curiosity, too, so I hope you don’t mind if I jump in with a few thoughts…
1) “Creative invention is not admitted, merely construction.” This statement of yours about the opening lines is a fairly deep observation that could lead to a lot of places. You are right, I’d argue, that these lines make some kind of truth claim, trying to set this play apart from dramatic fiction. There’s another way to think about it: I always think of Kaufman as a practitioner of form, and “constructing” is something you do with the form of a work that sets it apart from writing or drafting (although it is still a creative process!). In what ways might Kaufman might be trying to draw the audience’s consciousness to the form of TLP at the same time he’s making that truth claim? To what purpose? And, how do those two things (the form and the truth claim) interrelate? That consciousness of the play as a constructed form could either make an audience more critical of that truth claim, or less, depending on how you see things.
2) “I have felt the burden that I’m sure the Tectonic Theater Company members felt to “say it correct.” Even though my characters are long dead, I tread carefully around them.” Getting into the ethics of representation is a very messy issue. When dealing with a real, historical person in a dramatic environment, it seems like this kind of angst pops up a lot in drama. How does one “get it right”? And, how does one “say it correct?” That double-existence seems to cue ethical concerns unique to documentary theater, and that interests me.
Take Roy Cohn in Angels in America for instance. Kushner very obviously picked Cohn for his specific historical reality (his HIV, connection to Nixon, the Rosenbergs, etc.) but Kushner “creates” him as a new character. When you consider this play, does Kushner have that same obligation to his character? Or does the play’s overt fiction free him from that?
Or, with your own project, your main focal relationship between Hamilton and Burr presents its own interesting complications. Both of these figures are real, historical people who left an archive, but they are also highly mythologized as individuals (because of the duel) and as “founding fathers,” so to speak. They are part of the myth of the creation of America. How do you see your need to “say it correct” for these figures being like, or unlike, any obligation Tectonic feels they have for their living, contemporary Laramie citizens?
Thanks for your post!
–Jackrabbit