THE TECTONIC PROCESS
THE JOURNEY FROM LARAMIE TO THE STAGE
"Eight actors shifted seamlessly between dozens of characters, including themselves. With a spare stage setting of simple tables, chairs, and the occasional technological magic (a bank of television sets, live-feed cameras, and the illusion of rainfall), the town of Laramie appeared before us. As audience members, we identified with the characters and fell under the spell of the people of Laramie. As performers, we were constantly amazed by the 'virtuosity' of the actors—no weak links in sight. As ethnographers, we wondered: How did they approach their participants?... From the four hundred hours transcribed interviews how did they decide to select these sound bites and reject others?" Jay Baglia and Elissa Foster "Performing the Really Real: Cultural Criticism, Representation and Commodification in The Laramie Project."
In November of 1998, five weeks after Matthew Shepard was killed and over the course of a year, members of the Tectonic Theater Project traveled from New York City to the town of Laramie, Wyoming conducting and compiling taped interviews with over 200 townspeople. The interviews were devised into a “theatrical collage” documenting the people of Laramie’s reaction to the crime and media attention that had immediately descended upon them. Original TTP member Maude Mitchell recalls, “There was much fear and trepidation among many of us when as most of us had never conducted an interview before.” Under the guidance of Kaufman, the members looked for interviews that they could eventually theatricalize into a performance piece. The actors returned to New York and spent months in table work listening to tapes, workshopping and ultimately developing finalized moments for the play. Although it became apparent through the interviewing process that violence in Laramie existed on a much broader scale (violence towards women, Native Americans, violence among minorities and teens), Kaufman adhered to his original goal of focusing on the communities’ reaction to Shepard’s death.
The first phase of the workshops consisted of members portraying the people of Laramie he or she had interviewed. At times themes were suggested by Kaufman such as homophobia, the town’s response to the trial or the perpetrators and a TTP member was then asked to would build a moment around the theme. Other times form dictated.
This is what we do in rehearsal. We learn as we go.
We get into a room, pose some questions, and we ask the theatre to help us discuss it.
Regarding the two year process of moving the interviews from the from plains to the stage, Kaufman states, “When you have fifteen people in a room who have all conducted interviews, who have invested themselves over the course of a year in their characters and their interviewees, unless you have a very strong organizing principle, how do you determine what text makes it into the play and what text doesn't make it into the play? Ultimately, it is true that it is my final decision if I'm not interested in something. But what would happen invariably is that we would keep talking about it until I was finally interested in it or I wasn't. Although I was the ultimate arbiter, hopefully I created a world in which we knew where we were going.”
The workshops were conducted allowing a space to collectively search for Laramie Moments. “The way in which 'Moment: the Fence' at the end of act one of Laramie was created displays this dialectical and collective exchange—form and content dictating one another. Tectonic member Greg Pierotti originally created the Moment. He culled numerous opinions about the fence to which Shepard was bound from the collected interviews, which he arranged in a specific order. Then he directed his fellow collaborators to come forward with a chair, sit down, and read their bit of text. All the characters came from different emotional and intellectual places in regard to their feelings and thoughts about the fence, so he directed the actors to come from different areas on the stage.” Brown
The first two acts were worked out at Sundance Lab and further developed at Dartmouth College in an August residency sponsored by New York Theatre Workshop. The third act, which depended on the outcome of Aaron McKinney's trial in October, was finished during the rehearsal period in Denver.
TECTONIC TECHNIQUES
Influenced by the work of theoreticians such as Mary Overlie and Polish director Taduesz Kantor, Tectonic’s Kaufman tackles the vertical hierarchy of text and builds his theatre around the equal interplay between all theatrical elements in order to construct a world in which text is not the overriding element. Though collaborative, the Tectonic Theater Project is not a theatre collective.
Described on their home page, Tectonic Theatre Project’s objective is “to explore new theatrical vocabularies and theatrical languages that use the full potential of the stage."
Kaufman took an approach of asking actors to bring in self-generated material and developed it by using his Moment Work technique. In the introduction to The Laramie Project he defines a Moment as “ a unit of theatrical time then juxtaposed with other units to convey meaning”(xiv). Using the structural form of stating aloud, "I begin . . . I end" as they start and stop the performance of their Moments, the performance-writers frame each Moment they present. The goal of a theatrical moment is “to suggest, not recreate,” a Brechtian technique, allowing the audience to interpret and take part in the construction of the play.
MOMENT WORK
A technique for creating and analyzing theater developed by Kaufman where
• actors become “performance writers”
• actors create moments individually as homework and collaborate in workshops
• an attempt to use all the tools of the theater is desired.
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Baglia, Jay and Elissa Foster. “Performing the “Really” Real: Cultural Criticism, Representation and Commodification in The Laramie Project.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Spring 2005): 127-145.
Brown, Rich. "Moisés Kaufman: The Copulation of Form and Content." TheatreTopics (2005): 51-67.
Bucknel Theatre. “Devising the American Family.” Documentary. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Apr.2011.
Kaufman, Moisés. The Laramie Project. Vintage 2001.
Tectonic Theater Project. tectonictheaterproject.org. Web. Aug. 2013.
A Moment with Maude Mitchell
or Maude Mitchell on Moments, A Minute with Maude Mitchell, or Maude Mitchell’s Memories
(Telephone Interview. 23 Aug. 2013)
Oberlin graduate and Award winning OBIE actor for her portrayal of Nora in Mabou Mines Dollhouse, Maude Mitchell was an original member of The Laramie Project. She helped to enlighten us on the subject of Moment Work by recalling her experiences of being an integral part of the developmental process of the play.
How do you define a Moment?
Maude: The best way I know to describe Moment Work is to think of it musically. To me a Moment is comparable to a phrase of music made up of individual notes that have a coherent emotional dynamic. Beat changes inside the phrase are comparable to chord changes. Moments can be inspired by imagery, a section of text, or an idea. I see Moment Work as both a director’s tool and an actor’s tool that feeds the work.
Tectonic states that a performance-writer attempts to use all elements of the theater when creating a Moment. How was this applicable to your process?
Maude: I’ll give you an example of a moment I created while working on Naomi Izuka’s Marlowe’s Eye under the direction of Moisés– moment work seems especially useful in creating a world for non-linear theater texts like Izuka’s. My role was Queen Elizabeth I, and I wanted to explore this great monologue that I had beginning with the words: “I died, I died–I died again” (it’s been a long time so that may not be the exact wording). I remember Moisés giving us all an enormous amount of freedom in which to explore– Carte Blanche. I did extensive research, an aspect I love, and discovered that at one time Queen Elizabeth was dying of small pox. After all known remedies had been exhausted in a last ditch effort save her life an unorthodox physician was brought in (I think he might have been Arabian). He prescribed that the Queen be wrapped from head to toe in a bolt of scarlet silk, completely unclothed underneath, with only her signet ring showing and then laid in front of a roaring fire– and so she was. Something like 36 hours later she was unwrapped and low and behold she survived! When I read that I was so excited I went directly to the garment district and bought a bolt of cheap scarlet cloth–the moment in rehearsal began with me standing in the middle of a ring of candles swathed like a mummy in scarlet revealing only an enormous ring. Playing my ‘handmaiden’ another actor slowly circled me unwinding the length of cloth while I spoke: “ I died, I died–I died again etc.” Visually that moment didn’t make it into the piece–but during the run of the piece whenever I delivered that monologue, the eerie, ritualistic, atmosphere, conjured by exploring the text in such a fashion informed, deepened and fed my performance.
How did the Laramie interviews turn into finalized pieces?
Maude: As I recall, we returned from Laramie and spent countless hours doing table work, discussing, and work shopping, listening to taped interviews, and reading the transcriptions to one another. Then in the summer, we work-shopped the play for two and a half weeks at the Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah which is an incredible place to work–a slice of creative heaven.
I was sharing a house with the designer, Sarah Lambert–Sarah is incredibly bright with a wry sense of humor, and in the evenings, we’d end up staying up far into the night–talking, talking, talking about the work, tossing around ideas: it was a delight. The entire company was deeply invested in the work. Working at the Lab it was impossible not to be aware of time constraints–the process was fast paced, emotionally demanding and at times we all felt the pressure to produce quickly. Based on the work we were doing Moisés finalized the casting and I was privileged to originate the part of Reggie Fluty.
Home | The Laramie Project Synopsis + Kaufman bio | The Laramie Project Timeline (the crime, the trials, the play) | Sentencing & The Death Penalty
Homophobia & the "Gay Panic" Defense | Documentary Theatre | The Laramie Project: Analysis & Critical Commentary |
The Laramie Project: A Devised Ethnodrama? | The Tectonic Process | The Matthew Shepard Foundation | Hate Crimes Legislative Timeline & Debate