Originally written for the fall 2018 Mira Costa High School production of « The Laramie Project, » directed by Jonathan Westerberg, « Costa-Laramie » is a suite consisting of four movements:
« 1. Media Railway » is expresses rail-like change from an avalanche of media a rural American town as the result of Matthew Shepard’s murder.
« 2. Laramie/Matthew » steps back to express the base sentiment for Laramie itself. The clarinet signifies Matthew against « heteronormative » strings in terms of its unchangeable musical nature. The clarinet is Matthew in life, and invites the player with all-too-short moments that are wry, humorous, dark, and contemplative.
« 3. Elegy » signifies the painful and various emotional acceptance of the town of the tragedy itself, and was visually represented in the original production with an assembly of actor chairs ingeniously assembled to simulate the fence upon which Shephard was tortured.
« 4. « Amazing Grace » » places the song title in quotes because it offers the audience the question of whether the reformation is attainable in the absence of its voiceless subject (Shepard). The addition of the clarinet as a harmonious part of the climax suggests either that it is, or is the fiction such reformation requires.
