Kaufman says, "the whole thing was very strange
because most of us had never conducted an inter-
view. Not knowing [how to] served us well. We
wanted to hear what people wanted to speak. It was
very clear that we were trying to listen."
Being in the Wyoming courtroom for the trial of one
assailant, Aaron McKinney, proved even more intense.
"That raised all kinds of ethical questions for us,
he says. "What right had we to be there? We're the-
ater people. We're not used to being in criminal tri-
als sitting next to the mother of the murdered boy. I
had to ask, 'What am I doing to my company mem-
bers, bringing them into a situation of this nature.'"

Different Expectations

Kaufman is from an upper-middle-class Venezuelan
family.
"I went to Central University in Caracas_for busi-
ness administration. After the first hour of account-
ing, I decided I had to do theater," he says.
He joined the university's theater collective,
Thespis, where "visionary director" Fernando Ivosky
was a disciple of such grounded experimenters as
Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski.
After five years as an actor doing plays by Ionesco,
Moliere and Ivosky — and after much time spent
mulling issues of being gay, and especially the diffi-
culty of being gay in Venezuela's macho culture —
Kaufman knew he wanted to direct.
There was no such opening for him in Thespis, so
he came to New York, much to the consternation of
his Latin-Jewish parents.
"They reacted badly at first," Kaufman says.
"They wanted me to be a businessman, get married
and give them many grandchildren. Now, though,
they are very supportive."
Kaufman had learned a good deal of craft, he says,
"but not a lot of the theoretical basis for the work I
wanted to do."
The experimental theater wing of New York
University's theater program proved "the perfect
place. By the time I left, I knew I wanted to start
my own theater company." And so he did.
It was equally clear to Kaufman that he "didn't
want to have a theater company that [mechanically]
produced four plays a season." Process and formal
experimentation were going to be his emphasis.
Today, his managing director (and parmer of 11 years)
Jeff LaHoste and actor Andy Paris still remain from that
first group. Their initial works were inventive stagings of
unusual texts — The Nest, for instance, by the German
avant-gardist Franz Xavier Kroetz, and Three Women in
Beckett, culled from Samuel Beckett dramas.
Also in his repertory: the later plays of Tennessee
Williams, in which the playwright "was departing
from lyrical realism."
Then came Kaufman's breakthrough: "It became
clear that if I was devoted to this kind of formal explo-
ration, I could only go so far with pre-existing texts."
He set to work on his Oscar Wilde project. And
remarkably, Kaufman's first original play was also his
first wide-scale hit, Gross Indecency.
Beautifully structured and as visually interesting as
it is psychologically astute, Gross Indecency had an 18-
month Off-Broadway run that spawned companies in
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto and London.
That success gave Tectonic the wherewithal to begin
its research in Laramie. With the head of the theater pro-
gram at the University of Wyoming, Rebecca Hilliker,

Talking Back

Post-play discussions spur learning and sharing

among audience, experts, cast and crew.

DON COHEN
Special to the Jewish News

backs," which will be held on con-
secutive Thursday nights during
JET's run of The Laramie Project.
While the production is plenty
nce again, the Jewish
thought-provoking in its own
Ensemble Theatre
right, the ever-popular "talk-
mixes social commen-
backs"
focus on particular aspects
tary and entertainment
to open minds, challenge precon- of the production and the issues
raised. The goal is to spur learn-
ceptions and clarify values.
ing and sharing among the audi-
In a season tied thematically
ence,
experts, cast and crew.
to the slogan "Stop Hate," The
Montgomery
saw the original
Laramie Project follows Romeo
Tectonic
Theater
production of
and Juliet, which was set in
The Laramie Project in New York
Palestine under the British
City and says he's proud to be
Mandate to explore Arab/Jewish
associated with JET's produc-
relations, and Talley'' Folly,
tion. The entire season and the
which explored barriers to hon-
"Stop Hate" campaign "is a cre-
est interpersonal relationships
ative and wonderful thing,"
and acceptance.
Montgomery says.
Using the horrific 1998 tor-
"With all the education and
ture/murder of gay college stu-
advocacy we do, there is nothing
dent Matthew Shepard as a
like using the arts to make peo-
starting point, The Laramie
ple think. While the play is spe-
Project goes beyond the crime
cific to the situation surround-
and the trial as people of that
ing Matthew Shepard and
Wyoming town share the impact Laramie, Wyo., the issues it rais-
the murder had on their home
es could be about any town, and
and their lives.
any act of hate."
Jeffrey Montgomery, director of
The scheduled "talk-backs" for
the Detroit-based Triangle
The Laramie Project include:
Foundation, which is a national
• Feb 28: Hate Crime Laws
leader in advocacy for the gay, les-
— Michigan's hate crime laws
bian, bisexual and transgender
do not cover victims targeted
community, is organizing the "talk- because of real or perceived sex-

0

supporting him, the door to the Western town opened.
And though Kaufman set up certain ground rules
for safety — no one was to conduct an interview
without a partner; everyone carried a cell phone —
the artists found many surprises along the way.
When Brill visited Laramie to absorb the landscape
for design ideas, he realized the crime could have
occurred anywhere. He found himself "almost in the
back yard of Russell Henderson," one of Shepard's
two assailants, who avoided trial by pleading guilty
to kidnapping and murder in a plea bargain.
"It was a run-down development that looked as if it
never got finished. This was where he grew up with his
grandmother, though it could have been the central
California town (Paso Robles) where my grandmother
lived. This event wasn't really specific to Laramie."
A Catholic priest sympathetic to Shepard and the
Tectonic enterprise, a vigorously protesting lesbian
student, a haunting female deputy sheriff and many
closeted homosexuals were among the many surpris-
es the Tectonic researchers found.
The second-to-last development stage took place
at Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah, where Robert

ual orientation. Local legislators
and activists will discuss efforts
to broaden Michigan's law.
• March 7: People of Faith ---
Religion-based objections to
acceptance of homosexuals and
religious rationales for inclusion
will be discussed. Rabbi Josh
Bennett of Temple Israel will be
among the speakers, with special
invitees from the West
Bloomfield Clergy Association
and the National Conference for
Community and Justice (NCCJ)
Interfaith Committee.
• March 14: Educating for
Acceptance — The Triangle
Foundation's Jeff Montgomery
will join members of the .
Michigan Jewish Aids Coalition,
following a performance spon-
sored by MJAC.
• March 21: Partners Against
Hate — A panel of diverse com-
munity partners in JET's "Stop
Hate" campaign will address the
needs for coalitions and communi-
ty action in the fight against hate.
JET will also feature three per-
formances for high-school youth
at reduced rates, and a special
showing on Monday evening,
March 4, sponsored by the Artists
in the Schools project of the
Jewish Federation's Agency for
Jewish Education, funded by the
DeRoy Testamentary Foundation.
On Sunday, Feb. 24, special
$40 opening-night tickets for
The Laramie Project are available
for a Triangle Foundation bene-
fit. For more information, con-
tact JET at (248) 788-2900.

Blacker, the longtime Playhouse dramaturge, is artis-
tic director. More material was folded in during
rehearsals in Denver, after McKinney's trial and sen-
tencing to life imprisonment.
Reviews have been uniformly positive, with even
the ever-skeptical John Simon of New York magazine
calling the work "a terrific piece of theater, history
and life in the heartless heartlands. Both the individ-
ual pieces and their assemblage here are nothing
short of stunning, in both senses of the word."

From Stage To Screen

In a long and lyrical essay in American Theatre maga-
zine, critic Don Shewey wrote, 'Although the play fac-
tually recounts the events that took place on the night
of Shepard's beating, the three-day. vigil before he died
and the trials of his assailants, The Laramie Project is
not primarily a re-enactment of the crime but a por-
trait of a small town — think of an Our Town 2000."
"What's depressing about American theater," says
Kaufman with unerring logic, "is that 90 percent of

,

LITTLE TOWN on page 70

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2002

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