13 October 2009: Rewriting History in Laramie, Wyoming
Paul October 13th, 2009
Last night’s staged reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an Epilogue in 150 theatres all over America and around the world (I attended the one presented by Kansas City Repertory Theatre) had several recurring themes. First, the citizens of Laramie want to put the murder of Mattthew Shepard behind them; many of them are now also saying that what happened was not a hate crime but “a drug deal gone bad.” Second, when members of Moises Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project interviewed the students at the University of Wyoming on October 12th, the eleventh anniversary of Shepard’s brutal killing, many of them were genuinely clueless and asked, “Matthew Who?”
It’s sad, but why am I not surprised by this? After all, don’t we have people like Dick Cheney also attempting to rewrite the history of what went on in America during his watch? I don’t think we have to wait ten years before our students start asking—”Dick Who?” “Waterboarding What?” “Since When?” “Guantanomo Where?” “Why Bother?”
