Laramie.

After reading the Laramie Project, I was very impacted by the story it told but one thing that enhanced this a lot was watching the film of this play. Even though the reading of this play was very detailed and vivid, watching the film version gave  me a whole new view of the events that happened. One of the things that happened in this story that the film really emphasized was the verbal violence that took place after Matthew Shepard's murder. One example of this violence was the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church picketed Shepard's funeral. The film really showed me how intense this picketing was and the extreme measures people went to on topics about this case. Another huge thing that the film version of this play did a great job at portraying and emphasizing was how eerie and desolate the location of Shepard's murder really was, while at the same time still being a beautiful place. This may sound rather insignificant, but I had a completely different picture in my head and this film showed the viewers exactly what Matthew Shepard had seen during his last hours which I believe is very important. Although the written play, the Laramie Project, did a great job at explaining the events that revolved around Matthew Shepard's murder in great detail, the film version of this play opened a completely new window and a new perspective on Shepard's case and the events that happened because of it.

20/20

During this week my class watched, read, and discussed many different topics related to the killing of Matthew Shepard, but the one thing that we watched that impacted me the most was easily the 20/20 Report on this case. This is because this report presented so many different views and so many different ideas that were not presented in any of the other items we read or watched. One of the things that shocked me that was discussed in this report was the fact that members of the Westboro Baptist Church Picketed Matthew's funeral, saying that he deserved to die because he was homosexual. This amazed me because I never thought anyone could go so low to ever say something like this about a person. Another reason why this report was the thing that shocked me the most, and probably the biggest, was the fact that both of Matthew's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russel Henderson, were interviewed during this report. This was very interesting to me because of some of the things that they said, and just the fact that it was the first time that they were ever interviewed after Matthew's death. One of the big things that Aaron McKinney brought up during his interview was that Matthew's murder had nothing to do with the fact that he was homosexual, and this was very interesting because almost everyone believed that this was the sole motive for Matthew's murder. Another thing that was brought up during this interview that was very shocking to me was during Russel Henderson's interview when he said that all he did was tie up Matthew, and other than that he never touched him. He even says that he tried to stop Aaron from beating Matthew, but Aaron responded by hitting Russel with his gun. During his interview, Aaron says that all of this is indeed true, and that he feels that it is completely his fault for Russel being in jail. Overall, this report was packed with shocking information, and it was the one thing that impacted me the most out of all of the different things my class went over.

The Laramie Project

Although the Laramie project is a very entertaining play full of information, it can be very hard to understand. I have really enjoyed reading this play so far, but the style of writing that it is done in can make the play hard to follow. In my opinion, the biggest thing that causes this is the fact that the play is constantly jumping back and forth between characters. One example of where the book jumps from character to character is in the beginning of the book where a rancher named Eileen Engen talking about how important it is to maintain your land in Laramie, and then out of no where a character named Doc O'Connor came out of no where and said "I Love it here." (Kaufman 7). Things like this happen very often throughout the book, and although it is possible to adjust to, it still makes it very confusing in the sense that it is hard to tell who is talking and when. Another thing that made this book hard to follow was the fact that all of the characters would be responding to questions, but the questions would not be presented. I would have changed this by making the questions much more obvious and also by having better transitions between the characters. I understand that this play would be much more understandable if it was presented to me in a visual form, but I still believe there are better ways that this play could have been put together.

This is a picture of how the play may look, and an example for how the stage for this play may be set up.

This video shows a visual representation of the play, and even though this video makes a few things more clear, it is still somewhat confusing because of how it was written.