The number one question I've been asked about this play (besides "What is it about?") is, "Why did you choose this play?"
There are many reasons, but I'll keep it to the top three.
The first is that my first job as a director in an educational setting is to pick plays that are going to be beneficial for my students to work on. This play is incredibly challenging for actors, especially young actors, because they are portraying at minimum four different characters throughout the play, most likely more. That's a great deal to keep track of mentally: the character's thoughts, experiences, beliefs, their idealogies, voices, speech patterns, ways of moving, not to mention their blocking and lines!
All of that is an excellent challenge for a young student-actor, and they have risen to the challenge marvelously. Furthermore, for the student-artisans and student-designers of Dr. Sannah's classes, assembling and painting this set meant working on a multi-level structure in an asymmetrical design, creating a world of the play that is meant to feel like somewhere without necessarily be a specific place - an essential skill to master for many different scripts across many different genres.
The second is that this play has tremendous resonance with the world that we currently occupy: the homophobia and bigotry that is embodied by many of these characters is still very much alive and well today, although perhaps it is sometimes better hidden because it is no longer publicly accepted (hence our current discomfort with the homophobic F-word slur in 2021, when in the 90's the casual use of that word was considered culturally "acceptable").
The attacks on the trans community in recent years have gained visibility and prompted increased dialogue, but by no means is the journey towards true acceptance by a wider society complete.
The third reason is that while this play focuses on the murder of Matthew Shephard in 1998, there are so many other innocent people who have been murdered for no other reason other than blind fear and hatred - and those victims are not all necessarily gay. If you listen to the lines of the play, some of the words out of the characters mouths are the exact same lines that are used to justify the killing of innocent people of color, "Wrong place at the wrong time," "Both sides are at fault," "Said something he shouldn't have said," etc.
This play, as an example of documentary theatre, is one of the greatest, because it does not preach its message - it asks questions. Why do we believe what we believe? Where do our common human connections bring us together more than our differences divide us? Can people really change their hearts and minds?
So the biggest questions that the play leaves us wondering: What do we do next? How do we make the world better, safer, more compassionate? Where do we go from here?
