AUBURN — Sitting among the barely lit theater seats of the Great Falls School and wearing a black “Laramie Project” cap, Linda Britt looked worn.
Though the play’s first performance was two weeks away, dark circles sat beneath her eyes, the result of long nights of rehearsals. She wondered if audiences would turn out for the toughest play she’d ever directed.
“It’s an experimental play about a serious topic, not necessarily commercially viable,” she said.
It’s about a real event that still divides many Americans. And it could have happened here, she said.
“The Laramie Project” is about the aftermath of the infamous Matthew Shepard murder.
In October 1998, the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student was abducted, pistol-whipped and left for dead outside Laramie, Wyo. He died a few days later.
He was tortured and murdered because he was gay. Two local men were convicted and are serving life sentences.
The play was written by members of the Tectonic Theater Project, an award-winning company whose plays have been performed around the world, who interviewed a cross-section of the town. Most of the dialogue comes from those interviews.
The play, when Britt discovered it in written form, seemed to speak directly to her.
“I got the script and read it. Then I read it again,” she said. “It just got under my skin. Because it’s so real, it just spoke to me.”
She pitched it to the Community Little Theatre Board of Directors. She asked the nonprofit company, which spends much of every season on comedies and musicals, to gamble on the award-winning, but dark, story.
“It isn’t Rogers and Hammerstein,” Britt said. “It isn’t a Neil Simon comedy. It doesn’t make people want to sing along. I was really gratified when the board decided to take the chance.”
The play opens on Jan 18.
Some regulars to the theater won’t come, Britt predicted. But maybe, the play will draw a different audience. She, the cast and the crew all hope to draw as many people as possible.
Her hope is that folks find some truth in the drama.
“Laramie is the size of Auburn,” she said. “It could be Auburn if the landscape were a little different.”
Everyone knows someone who is affected by bias, she said.
Maybe folks will ask themselves what the characters keep asking, “How could this happen here?” Britt said.

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