David Little stopped off at the grocery store one night in Casper between work and rehearsal for "The Laramie Project."

He saw the same man over and over, in every aisle, until finally, near the canned goods, the man stopped him.

Hey, he said to Little, in a calm voice, aren't you the guy I saw on TV, talking about that play?

Yes, David said.

"Fag lover," the man spit out.

Little mustered, "Thank you for your opinion, sir," and walked away.

Actors in Stage III Community Theatre's upcoming production of "The Laramie Project" find that producing the play in Casper doesn't sit well with everyone.

Don Allen was an usher at another recent production when some season ticket-holders told him to punch their tickets through - they wouldn't be coming to "The Laramie Project."

And several younger actors said their parents aren't comfortable coming to see them perform.

Jason Yocum said, "My dad was like, 'The Laramie Project, huh?'"

The play deals with perhaps the most controversial crime in Wyoming history: the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.

The Stage III production brings the story home to the same theater company where Shepard performed while growing up in Casper.

The brutal crime brought swarms of national media to Laramie and Casper and touched off a national debate about homosexuality, hate crime laws, violence and life in Wyoming. It was a defining moment for a generation of college students and young gays.

But the play isn't really about the crime, or being gay, or even Shepard.

After the crime, after most of the reporters had gone, playwright Moises Kaufman took members of a New York theater crew to Laramie six times to learn more. They conducted more than 200 interviews, and put the conversations together in a documentary drama.

Act One opens with a police sergeant describing Laramie, its history on the railroad. University president Philip Dubois says he doesn't think twice about letting his kids play outside after dark. College student Jedadiah Schultz says Laramie is a beautiful town, only now, it's "defined by an accident, a crime."

The playwrights continue their interviews, meeting the people who called Shepard a friend. They meet the DJ who saw him last, the bicyclist who found his battered body, and the sheriff's deputy who cut his hands free from the fence.

Interviews take the play through the reaction to Shepard's death on campus and in Casper. Finally the writers leave Laramie behind, the sparkling lights receding in the distance.

Most of the details come from real conversations, with real Wyoming people - a rancher, a professor, a bartender, and more.

"I always stress this is not the story of Matthew Shepard," said director Bernie Strand, who is a licensed clinical social worker in Casper. "This is the story of how regular people react when faced with unspeakable events."

Some productions of the play lean toward advocacy - for gay rights, for hate crime legislation, for greater tolerance and acceptance of diverse views.

Strand says her interpretation steers clear of that.

"Stage III is not a radical organization," she told the actors at an audition. "It's not even much of a political organization."

They're not necessarily playing it safe. There are dramatic, emotional scenes, the largest cast in Stage III history, and a number of new technical tricks. But Strand says she wants even her conservative mother-in-law, who lives on a Wyoming ranch, to feel comfortable in the audience.

"You will come away feeling like at least whatever your viewpoint is, has been represented," Strand said. "If you come into it with an open mind, you will probably be educated. If you come in with a strong viewpoint, you will not be offended."

Every year a play selection committee at Stage III reads dozens of plays and recommends six for the next season.

"The Laramie Project" has been considered and rejected several times.

The crime was too recent, or another company had just put it on, or, Strand said, the committee wasn't sure any actors would want to participate. It was too painful. Several Stage III regulars knew Matthew Shepard personally, or lived in Laramie at the time of the crime.

Strand, who served on the selection committee this year, had never read the play before, and didn't really want to.

"I expected it to be grisly, and radical and angry," she said, "and I was so pleasantly surprised."

Still, she wondered what the community would think, and mostly, whether the production would be disrespectful to Matthew's parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard. Judy Shepard lives in Casper when she's not traveling for the Matthew Shepard Foundation, while Dennis Shepard works overseas.

If Judy Shepard said no, the play was off.

She said yes.

"I think the production itself is the best thing that is out there available to the public," Judy Shepard said in an interview. "It's so honest and straightforward and 'real people.' I support it in every sense of the word. Everybody should see it."

With that blessing, Strand called for a cast.

Stage III board member PJ Rose said, "We had an inkling we'd get a hell of a turnout."

"My name is Bernie Strand, and I'm the designated grown-up," she told the 29 actors cast in the play, each of whom take on multiple roles.

Along with seasoned actors, Rose said, there are about a dozen who've never acted with Stage III before, and others who've never acted at all, save perhaps a high school production.

"The most exciting thing to me is that every one of you wanted to be associated with the show," Strand told the cast.

While some Stage III regulars couldn't bring themselves to participate because it was too emotional, she said, other actors, including newcomers, felt compelled.

Jason Yocum, 21, last acted as one of the "seven brothers" in a Natrona County High School play.

There's not much to do in Casper for a young person, he said, but he wanted to get involved.

"I heard about this and I thought to myself, 'Yeah.'"

Yocum said the play is timely. He works for the company that does advertising in the Casper movie theaters, and heard all the response to "Brokeback Mountain." Then he saw Guy Padgett on "Larry King Live."

Yocum remembers a snow day in junior high when he stayed home and watched television. He saw protestors picketing outside Shepard's funeral.

David Little, a classmate of Yocum's, remembers teachers who'd had Shepard as a student. Playing one of Shepard's killers in the play is especially difficult for him.

"I felt this is a story that needs to come to Casper," Little said, "and it's long overdue."

Rose, on the board, hadn't acted in three years when Stage III decided to produce "The Laramie Project." He was itching to get back under the lights anyway, and said, "I couldn't not be involved."

He and Shepard were on stage together in "The Suicide."

"I knew the kid," Rose said. "He was one of us."

Whatever the actors brought to the play, Strand told the cast at an early rehearsal she didn't want them discussing politics, or speculating.

"Other than the two murderers, and whatever higher power there may be, none of us really know what happened," Strand said. They were there to put on a great production, and to have fun doing it.

The first Wyoming production of "The Laramie Project" made some people nervous.

It was in 2000 at the University of Wyoming.

People worried the play would reflect poorly on the state, because of how the media portrayed Laramie after the murder, said Rebecca Hilliker, chairwoman of the university's Department of Theatre and Dance.

This past November, that was still a worry for people in Cheyenne, when Laramie County Community College put on the production.

Brenda Lyttle, who works for the state Department of Family Services, directed the play there.

"The experience that I found in Cheyenne, with people who weren't familiar with the script, were comments about, 'why would I do a show about gay people, that makes Wyoming people look stupid? What redeeming value would there be in reliving something we're embarrassed about?'"

Lyttle selected the play after she read the script and was overpowered with the sense she needed to direct it, she said.

But she knew it might not go over well at the community-based Cheyenne Little Theatre. So she contacted the community college.

"The language, the 'f-bomb' is in there," she said. "It had been the policy in the past about not using that word on the stage. Also, I wasn't quite sure how the subject matter would fly with our more conservative Little Theatre audiences."

The college accepted and students and community members auditioned in numbers.

Lyttle was a law student at UW when Shepard was murdered, and found in the story the "redeeming value" others questioned. Unlike some media reports, the play shows "exactly what happened,'" she said.

"I see theater as artwork," she said, "which is using various tools available to us to create a moment where we as human beings can look at ourselves, whether that is tragic, or comedic, or informative."

At callbacks, the Casper cast gathered in the lobby of the Stage III building on a Sunday afternoon. They sat on worn couches and donated chairs or the maroon carpet of the drafty cement-block building. Someone said it used to be a bar. The sound of a neighborhood dog barking came through the walls.

Strand gave out parts.

Dennis Rollins said, "Yes! Thank you. I wanted that one," when he got the role of Rulon Stacey, the hospital executive who kept the world updated on Shepard's condition from Fort Collins.

They shared the few scripts Strand had so far, and read through the lines.

They laughed at the funny parts, like when limo driver Doc O'Connor says, "And I don't think Wyoming people give a damn one way or another if you're gay or straight, that's just what I just said, doesn't matter. If there's eight men and one woman in a Wyoming bar, which is often the case, now you stop and think - who's getting what?"

The lines showed the play doesn't presume the audience knew Shepard, or knew about the crime. It reveals Shepard in details, how he paid for imported beer in dollar bills, while his killers bought a pitcher with dimes and quarters. How, when the officer came to help him, she saw blood all over his face, except in the trails of his tears.

As rehearsals progressed, Strand worked out how the actors should stand on stage in different scenes, and got them thinking about what props they'd have.

Each actor will wear all black, with one prop - a backpack, a beer mug, a stethoscope, a holster - to define each character.

"This show is not going to be about acting," Strand said. "The words are compelling. The words are telling you who that character is. Be that character in words."

Rehearsals start with a warm-up. The second night, the cast went into the theater and stood in a circle.

"In honor of Matt, we will start with some wonderful silliness," Strand said. "Yesterday we did the feet, today we'll do the arms."

The actors danced and sang.

"You put your right arm in, you put your right arm out…."

Strand told the actors they could look up the character they're playing, and talk to them, take advantage of the real-life person.

One actor, Kerry Drake, didn't have to - he plays himself, a Star-Tribune reporter who covered the murder. Three other Star-Tribune newsroom staff members are in the play.

Susan Burk, a KTWO broadcast journalist, is another of the few actors who were directly involved at the time.

She covered the funeral, the protests, the descent of the national media on Casper. She interviewed people, and selected sound bites to get at the truth, like the playwrights did. She tried to tell it straight, and objectively.

Theater, as Cheyenne director Lyttle said, can cast a different light on questions of humanity than journalism can.

Still, the play doesn't try to resolve the issues many raised around Shepard's death: Whether the killers should have gotten the death penalty. Whether Shepard was partly responsible for his death. Whether it should have been such a big story. If there is such a thing as a hate crime. Whether Laramie was to blame, too.

In one scene, one of Burk's characters, a playwright, interviews Rev. Roger Schmit, a Catholic priest in Laramie.

He tells her, "I will trust you people that if you write a play of this, that you say it right, say it correct. I think you have a responsibility to do that."

That's what the Casper cast is trying to do, Burk said.

"They're looking for the truth in these characters."

And when you're looking for the truth, she said, there are no easy answers.

Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at barbara.nordby@casperstartribune.net.