Photo of Maryville College Theatre students rehearsing for "The Laramie Project"
“Angels” — (foreground, from left) Colin Hood ’25, Olivia Cameron ’25, Andrew Hastings ’25, Sasha Hoenie ’26, Meredith Coyne and Daisy Cranfill ’27 — block the vitriol of Westboro Baptist Church’s Rev. Fred Phelps, portrayed by (in the background) Jenni Cate Rhodes ’24.

Maryville College Theatre Director Andy Vaught: ‘The Laramie Project’ relevant for students, community

Oct. 11, 2023

Poster for "The Laramie Project" fall 2023 MC Theatre production

Driving down East Lamar Alexander Parkway on Sept. 2 and seeing a line of local residents protesting a Pride event being held on the Maryville College campus that day, Andy Vaught realized he made the right call in selecting “The Laramie Project” as the fall production for the MC Theatre Department.

Not that Vaught — a visiting lecturer in theater now in his second season directing the College’s theatrical programs — had doubts. After all, the growing polarization over LGBTQ issues both regionally and nationally made the play — which explores the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming — particularly poignant. Debuting Oct. 26 at the Clayton Center for the Arts, “The Laramie Project,” Vaught said, is both a powerful narrative and a way of using theater to foster conversation and reflection.

“I had such a good first season last year and really enjoyed everything, and in thinking of what we were going to do to follow it, it didn’t take long to settle on ‘The Laramie Project,’” he said. “I started thinking about the intense vitriol out there toward people just living their lives here, and that got me thinking about my students. I don’t want to speak about all students at Maryville College, but we’re a safe bubble for those who need it in a place like this.

“So one, it’s relevant; and two, they need to know we’re thinking about this — us as a school and me as a professor — and that we’re concerned about their safety and their humanity and their dignity. So once I saw that there was that reaction to Pride in the community, it made a lot of sense.”

Processing tragedy via theater

It’s also the 25th anniversary of Shepard’s murder, Vaught added, which makes it even more serendipitous. On Oct. 6, 1998, Shepard was approached by two men at a Laramie bar who offered to give him a ride home. They instead drove him to a remote area where they robbed, beat and tortured him before tying him to a split-rail fence and leaving him. He was rescued 18 hours later by a cyclist who at first mistook him for a scarecrow. The two men — Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson — were found guilty of first-degree murder and given consecutive life sentences, but Shepard’s sexuality as a gay man, and the absence of specific hate crime legislation at the time, received extensive media coverage and inspired “The Laramie Project,” written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project.

An example of documentary theater, the play is built from dozens of interviews conducted by members of the theater company with residents of Laramie, along with published news reports. Featuring more than 60 characters in a series of short scenes, it’s a powerful snapshot of the way the tragedy affected those who considered their community a bucolic Western mountain town, and one of the most fascinating elements, Vaught said, is the absence of Shepard himself.

“Matthew Shepard is not a character, and his absence only increases his stature,” he said. “The play itself is a lot of talking and the processing of the event, which is one reason it’s so effective. Talking about these things can be really painful, and the almost clinical nature of this play is deceitful, because it doesn’t spare you.

“One thing I’m trying to do in the Theatre Department is to create something that can be a glue for the College. Being in a play is a liberal arts experience — and because this one has 63 parts and 29 cast members, it allowed me to open it up in a really special way and talk about how a community deals with this tragedy.”

Community-building a part of play

As the child of two gay parents, the news of Shepard’s death was a gut punch that Vaught remembers vividly. During his first week of undergraduate studies at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, he was first exposed to the play, and the groundbreaking way the playwrights weaved together both tragedy and commentary into a meaningful experience that resonates emotionally is something he counts among his inspirations to mount such productions as part of the Maryville College Theatre program.

“It was one of the first big steps toward wanting to mix theater with social justice,” he said. “When I was doing a section on politically engaged theater in my Theatre 2 class, the students learned a little bit about the method of how they created the play, and while a lot of them had heard of it, they had never read it before. That surprised me, and so that was kind of the spark of us doing this.

“We had our first read-through the other night, and people were crying at the end of it. It’s a very powerful play, and it gives people a chance to be themselves on stage. That’s really important, because I’m not asking anyone to assume a role, even the students who play the perpetrators. There’s a distance between themselves and their roles, because I have to make sure everyone is comfortable throughout the process — reading it, impacting it and staging it.”

The Maryville College Theatre presentation of “The Laramie Project” will be carried out in conjunction with the MC Pride Club, he added, and the input of the club’s members has provided invaluable insight. The collaboration means that presenting the play will be as much of an experience than just another night of drama: Retired FBI special agent Cynthia Deitle, who led the Matthew Shepard Foundation for a number of years, will be present one evening to discuss her work involving hate crimes. Aja Rodriguez ’04, MC’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, is in discussions to organize a panel of alumni and current students to have an open dialogue on what it was like then and is like now to live as an openly LGBTQ individual on the Maryville College campus. Finally, prior to the Sunday performance, vendors will set up a Queer Community Market to foster community connections, Vaught added.

“We’re trying not only to have the show speak, but have events around it, because it’s important to do that when you have a show like this, and the odds of you being emotionally affected are real,” he said. “We don’t want to leave people feeling helpless and wondering what they can do. We want them to find and make connections right then, and we’re asking ourselves through this process how we can help foster those.”

“The Laramie Project” will be staged at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26 through Saturday, Oct. 28, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, in the Haslam Family Flexible Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts. Admission is free, and the performances are open to the public.

For more information, visit the Clayton Center online or call 865-981-8590. 

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”