McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Sept 1-5, 7.30pm Close to 11 years ago, in a small Wyoming town one night, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, robbed, beaten, tied to a fence out in the nearby countryside and left to die by two other young men. The gay university student's tortured body was not discovered until the next day. He died in hospital some days later from severe head injuries. The least populous and 10th largest state in the US, Wyoming may seem a world apart from Hong Kong. But Eric Ng, founder of Looking Glass Productions and director of The Laramie Project, says as far as attitudes towards homosexuality are concerned, contemporary Hong Kong is not far removed from Wyoming circa 1998. 'Most people in Hong Kong, if you are gay, they'll just ignore it - as long as you don't intrude on their life. What happens is that you have the idea that it is OK to persecute or hate homosexuality. Just because you don't talk about it does not mean that it is accepted,' says the Chinese-American, who spent many years living in small American towns before relocating to this part of the world. '[In] Hong Kong for the longest time now, sexual preference has simply not been an issue. We don't talk about it. We don't have to care about it. But now I think that people are coming to the realisation that - no, we do need to talk about it, we need to show these things and people need to understand that this is what people do and that it's OK,' Ng says. New York's Tectonic Theatre Project created The Laramie Project in reaction to the hate crime '[but] I'm hoping people won't just see it as a gay play,' Ng says. An example of verbatim theatre, the play's script consists of real words uttered by people such as the police officers and the doctor assigned to the Shepard case, along with those of other Laramie residents about what happened, feelings about it and their ideas about hate crimes and homosexuality. 'The play is more about how a community reacts to a traumatic incident,' says Ng. 'I think that what people tend to do is ... look at it and say, 'Well, OK, you know what? That was a couple of bad people, evil people, that came and did this and we should all feel sad for Matthew and demonise these few young kids,' Ng says. '[But] this play shows that in reality this could [happen] anywhere.' 2 Harbour Rd, Wan Chai, HK$220 Urbtix. Inquiries: 9100 5753
