Director Arlowe Sue Clementine, along with KU Theatre, is set to open a play about the anti-gay hate crime that took the life of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in 1998 in Wyoming.
For Clementine, the story feels less like distant history and more like something Lawrence could experience.
“We can’t forget that Westboro Baptist Church is 20 minutes down the road, and Fred Phelps is not only, you know, showcased in this production, in this show, but (his influence) is all around us on a regular basis,” Clementine said. “And I think that that adds a particular kind of tension to our particular production, to be so close to the sort of heart of … the biggest displays of hatred in the show.”
The shows are sold out, but an in-person waiting list opens up an hour before each performance. The play opens at 7 p.m. Friday, April 24 in Room 311 of the William Inge Memorial Theatre, 1530 Naismith Drive. The production will also run at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26.
“The Laramie Project” tells the story of two years of interviews that the Tectonic Theater Company conducted with the Laramie, Wyoming residents and those close to Shepard, who was murdered by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.
It is a documentary-style play set in both the past, detailing the timeline of events from the murder to sentencing, and the present, as the theater company conducts interviews post-sentencing.
Clementine originally joined the production team as the dramaturge, the researcher and expert of the play making sure that the cast has vital knowledge of the time, location and politics involved in the story.
Clementine, a doctoral student in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies department at KU, focuses their work on queer history in the Midwest from 1969 to the present.
“I’m well versed in this timeline of events and Matthew Shepard’s story,” Clementine said. “And sort of the overall cultural understanding of what Matthew’s legacy means.”
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Many of the cast members themselves are queer and are learning this history through these characters.
“I think that we don’t get enough queer and trans stories told by queer and trans people, and one of the things that I’m really proud of is that a lot of our cast is queer,” Clementine said.
Senior Marek Skeeba, who has lesbian parents and as a result has long been involved with the Lawrence queer community, said he wants this performance to show that it is important to accept all kinds of members of the queer community.
Senior Syd Olson, a queer and trans man who plays several roles in the production, said that performing the story every night has been emotionally demanding.
Olson said that living through the trauma of Shepard’s story on stage has been more difficult than past roles. What works for him is his de-roling process, which many of the cast members use, making the play an educational process rather than a traumatic one.
“We create sort of a boundary in this stage or in our rehearsal space, and we take a deep breath, we sort of say what we are in the space, and we step over that threshold,” Skeeba said.
Then, when he steps off the stage, he reminds himself that he is stepping out of his characters and returning to reality.
In addition to the heavy story, the play is even more unusual for a KU theatre season because it’s an ensemble piece with no single lead. Instead, the story is built communally.
Each actor plays four or five characters and a range of roles with varying accents and personalities. Skeeba said every character is based on a real person, so it is important they are all well rounded, like you could talk to them outside their monologues.
Senior theatre performance major Taylor Getz plays Romaine Patterson, who was a close friend of Shepard’s.
Getz said the scene she looks forward to the most is when her character blocks Phelps from protesting at Shepard’s funeral with giant angel wings.
The wings used in the play are replicas of the ones Angel Action sent out across the country for people to use in their own cities at vigils and protests in response to Shepard’s murder.
The show warns audiences that “the production includes adult language and themes. Anti-LGBTQ+ slurs are used by some characters. It is not appropriate for all audiences.”
However, as a queer and trans person and archivist, Clementine wants audience members to know that although this story is full of extreme moments of grief, there are also extreme moments of joy and connection.
“I think that those moments of the show are quite important to offer folks a full and holistic perspective of what it means to be a community, to be a part of a community, to experience grief and collaboration,” Clementine said.
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Courtney Lane (she/her), staff reporter, has worked with The Lawrence Times since April 2026. She can be reached at [email protected].
Read her complete bio here. Read her work for the Times at this link, and see her photography for the Times at this link.
Nathan Kramer (he/him), a multimedia student journalist for The Lawrence Times since August 2024, is a recent graduate of Free State High School. He also served as a news photo editor for Free State’s student publication, where he worked as a videographer, photographer and motion designer. See more of his work for the Times here.
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