The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (2012)
Written by Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber
Directed by James (Epp) Epperson
This documentary style drama depicts the town of Laramie, Wyoming, ten years after the death of Matthew Shepard. The show explores various points of view from mourning to political activism to avoidance. Because of the various perspectives portrayed in the production my goal was to make the sound design as simplistic and objective as possible. Using minimal internal cues my goal was to pull the audience out when a cue happened to make them think about the scene they had just seen.
Pre Show
Because Laramie Project: Ten Years Later deals with the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's murder, I found information about the incident. Using music that helped to establish the location as "Anywhere, Midwest, USA" I overlaid audio of the actors reading news articles to help inform the audience about Matthew Shepard. While audio from the actual townspeople and news anchors exists, I used the actors of the production in order to help the audience believe in this world and the people who live there.
Scene Transitions- Click
Laramie was a documentary style show. It consisted of interviews of the townspeople of Laramie by the members of Tectonic Theatre Project. In order to preserve this feeling of interviews and to make scene changes definite I used a click of a tape recorder at the beginning and ending of each scene. This reminded the audience that the show was segments and also pulled them out of the action to make them think.