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Swedish premiere of The Laramie Project in Skärholmen

By on March 3, 2018
AMPHI BASTIO

Kulturhuset Stadsteaterns child and youth scene combines community debate and performing arts infront of the election with a play aimed at first-time voters. The Laramie Project is about the murder of a young gay man in the United States in 1998. The play has been played all over the world since the first set in New York 20 years ago. On March 9, it is Swedish premiere in Skärholmen.

The Laramie Project is about the small town of Laramie, which was shaken by the brutal murder of a young gay man in 1998. Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, beaten and left to die tied at a fence. The event became a world news and one of the first murders that was clearly classified as hate crime. Immediately after the murder, The Tectonic Theater Project theater group travels to Laramie to create a picture of the place after what just happened. The group’s members make over 200 interviews with residents in the small town located in the USA’s most sparsely populated state of Wyoming. They speak with judges, neighbors, students, drivers, Catholics, Muslim feminists, policemen, parents and many more. Based on the interviews they write The Laramie Project.

– How does a place and people who live after such an event change? What questions and answers are needed when two people commit such a horrific crime in a city where they are familiar to most? The play is, of course, about the hate that Matthew Shepard was exposed to. But it’s even more about the people around such an event and how they act and reflect, says director Carolina Frände.

As an artist and director, she often returns to themes that deal with people’s equal and invincible value. Questions about the living conditions of HBTQ people are often the focus in the work.

– This is a play about people’s equal value. For more than a year, the United States has a president whose decision in different ways challenges people’s equal value; everyone’s right to healthcare and safety, the right to self-define their identity without endangering them. The Laramie Project has a strong social policy content and the reason I choose to have it on the repertoire as a high school performance right now is the election. What happens in other places and at other times, even if we do not take it for probability, can happen close to us, too, says Carolina Frände.

First performance: March 9, 2018
Stage: Skärholmen
From: 16 years

Helena Olofsson, Culture & Music | Skärholmen
MyGuide2Stockholm