'Matthew Shepard Was A Friend Of Mine'

I found the documentary absolutely soul destroying. The way in which it was made meant it feel so human, it was if there was only a thin piece of glass between me and the people taking as I was able to feel all these emotions coming from the speakers so intensely. Watching this documentary was so helpful for me. I think you can do all the reading you like on the topic, but you might never feel the tragedy as much as if you were watching that documentary. To watch these people speak about what they've been through and they're experiences just broke me. It brought it into perspective and the events became a lot more real and less distant. It enabled me to connect with the topics in the play a lot more deeply and therefore understand these issues more. This was incredibly helpful for playing my character Shadow, as she is someone who lived through it and had a real life relationship with Matthew. Therefore understanding the grief, shock and brutality of this is for someone who is involved is important so that I can understand Shadows point of view in his/her monologue.

The way the media portrays things like this is often in a desensitized way, and as a view you watch it and although you can appreicate & acknowledge that its 'sad' I think that you will never understand it fully unless you were living through it. However, I felt watching this documentary gave me the closest understanding I could get given that I had never lived through it and thus the closest me as Alabama was able to get to Shadow & his experiences.