THE LARAMIE PROJECT

Audition Materials for FEMALES

(You will be asked to read both selections.)

 

 

ERIN KREIFELS (p.35):

 

          Well I, uh, took off on my bicycle about five P.M. on Wednesday from my dorm. I just kinda felt like going for a ride.  So I—I went up to the top of Cactus Canyon, and I’m not superfamiliar with that area, so on my way back down, I didn’t know where I was going, I was just sort of picking the way to go, which now…it just makes me think that God wanted me to find him because there’s no way that I was going to go that way.

          So I was in some deep-ass sand, and I wanted to turn around—but for some reason, I kept going.  And, uh, I went along. And there was this rock, on the—on the ground—and I just drilled it. I went—over the handlebars and ended up on the ground.

          So, uh, I got up, and I was just kind of dusting myself off, and I was looking around and I noticed something—which ended up to be Matt, and he was just lying there by a fence, and I—I just thought it was a scarecrow.  I was like, Halloween’s coming up, thought it was a Halloween gag, so I didn’t think much of it, so I got my bike, walked it around the fence that was there, it was a buck-type fence.  And, uh, got closer to him, and I noticed his hair—and that was a major key to me noticing it was a human being—was his hair.  ‘Cause I just thought it was a dummy, seriously. I noticed—I even noticed the chest going up and down, I still thought it was a dummy, you know.  I thought it was just like some kind of mechanism.

          But when I saw hair, well, I knew it was a human being.

 

 

SHERRY JOHNSON (pp.64-65):

 

          I haven’t really been that involved, per se.  My husband’s a highway patrolman, so that’s really the only way that I’ve known about it.

          Now when I first found out I just thought it was horrible.  I just, I can’t…  Nobody deserves that!  I don’t care who ya are.

          But, the other thing that was not brought out—at the same time this happened that patrolman was killed.  And there was nothing.  Nothing.  They didn’t say anything about the old man that killed him.  He was driving down the road and he shouldn’t have been driving and killed him.  It was just a little piece in the paper.  And we lost one of our guys.

          You know, my husband worked with him.  This man was brand-new on the force.  But, I mean, here’s one of ours, and it was just a little piece in the paper.

          And a lot of it is my feeling that the media is portraying Matthew Shepard as a saint.  And making him a martyr.  And I don’t think he was.  I don’t think he was that pure.

          Now, I didn’t know him, but…there’s just so many things about him that I found out that I just, it’s scary.  You know about his character and spreading AIDS and a few other things, you know, being the kind of person that he was.  He was, he was just a barfly, you know. And I think he pushed himself around.  I think he flaunted it.

          Everybody’s got problems.  But why they exemplified him I don’t know.  What’s the difference if you’re gay?  A hate crime is a hate crime.  If you murder somebody you hate ‘em.  It has nothing to do with if you’re gay or a prostitute or whatever.

          I don’t understand.  I don’t understand.