Lansing - Todd Heywood found artistic inspiration at the most inconvenient of times - in the middle of the night.
Waking from a dream, he sat at his computer and churned out “Moral Obligations,” a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard two years before in 1998. It took Heywood 12 hours.
“What you read is literally the first draft,” Heywood said at the first staged reading of his play Monday on the steps of the Capitol. “There have been no edits.”
The reading was a part of an 18-hour vigil by Triangle Foundation in remembrance of Shepard’s death and hate crimes everywhere. Shepard, a University of Wyoming student, was beaten to death because he was gay.
With the help of six Lansing area actors, Heywood presented the play without the help of blocking or a stage to energize the action, recreating a fictionalized version of the events that precipitated Shepard’s murder.
The play switches from a priest reading the Stations of the Cross from Catholic liturgy to the expletive-laden dialogue before and during the beating of Shepard. Dozens of parallels are made between Shepard, renamed Jesse in this play, and Jesus Christ.
“My hope is that people see the parallel,” Heywood said. “I think too often we focus on difference rather than our commonalities. I think a piece like this shows that Christ is for everybody.”
Heywood made editing notes while the play progressed, explaining that he felt the obscene language needed a bit of revision.
“Part of it is the violence that’s there, and how do you portray violence with words,” Heywood said.
Jeff Omura, an Okemos High School senior, played Shepard’s character in the play. “It was a bit of a heavy script,” he said. “My biggest concern was using that language on the Capitol steps.”
In Heywood’s version, Jesse is a sexualized character, giving references to his soliciting other men in the bar where he met the two young men who eventually killed him.
“It’s the first time ever he was portrayed sexually,” said Leo Romo, a 51-year-old Saginaw resident and member of Triangle Foundation. “And that is really what happened, but we don’t think of it. We think of him as a very cute, wonderful kid. I thought the dialogue was very realistic.
“I could see guys doing this.”
Romo said the play helped him visualize what might have happened the night Shepard died.
“I could think maybe what Matthew thought about, because we really don’t know what they said,” he said. “The graphic discussions with the guys were really realistic.”
