During a school meeting on Wednesday, November 1, the Performing and Visual Arts Department performed a concert in honor of Matthew Shepard as part of an effort to raise awareness on LGBT+ rights.
This year, 2023, was the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death. Choral Director Michael Pfitzer and Dean of Inclusion & Community Life Steven Lee decided to reflect on and raise awareness of Matthew Shepard’s story.
On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was tied to a fence in a field and brutally attacked. He died on October 12 of that same year. As a result, his parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard started the Matthew Shepard Foundation in honor of his memory. Matthew Shepard’s death, one of the most infamous anti-gay hate crimes in American history, led to the passing of federal hate crimes legislation and started an activist movement that still continues today.
Mr. Lee and Dr. Pfitzer first got together in January of 2023 to discuss this event. Mr. Lee said that they decided on a concert because “it was much more interactive, so students, especially the performers, really got a sense of the emotions of that kind of historical moment through the dance, the lyrics, and the theater and spoken word. Overall, I just thought it’d be fun, and that an artistic performance would be more powerful than simply a slideshow or something.”
Dr. Pfitzer first heard the piece when he was working at Harvard during the 2016–2017 school year. He and his students worked with the composer of the piece, Craig Hella Johnson, to workshop it into something that could be performed by college and high school students. Johnson had specifically written the piece to share Matthew Shepard’s story, but it was first written for professional choirs to perform.
When sharing the impact the experience had on him and why he chose it for Deerfield’s concert, Dr. Pfitzer said, “I fell in love with the piece when I learned about it. And, the 25th anniversary seemed like the right opportunity to perform it.” He also expressed his gratitude to Johnson, who was supportive of Deerfield’s performance and spoke with choral classes through Zoom.
The singers performing in the concert came from a variety of different choral groups in the community. The largest movements consisted of members of the Deerfield Academy Chorus, the Academy’s largest choral ensemble. Some smaller movements were performed by specific classes, or small groups of students in a class. With so many moving parts, students began preparing for the concert as soon as they returned to school in early September.
Not only did the chorus perform, but the concert also involved the dance, instrumental, visual art, and theater programs. Director of Music Tom Bergeron and members of the chamber music class accompanied the chorus throughout the movements. Dancers, under the guidance of Director of Dance Jennifer Whitcomb performed during the movement that emphasized innocence, which was their own choosing. Lillian Regal ’24 narrated the performance, providing context and character to enhance the concert. Finally, Chamari Williams ’24 created a portrait of Matthew Shepard that stood outside the auditorium and on the programs.
To emphasize the importance of community in this concert, Dr. Pfitzer and Mr. Lee made the unusual decision to hold it during an all-school meeting, rather than in the evening like most concerts. Mr. Lee explained by saying, “Our students have really busy lives. Because of the story that we were trying to tell and the way we were trying to communicate it, we felt like it was something that would be valuable for the whole community, so we tried to embed it into the day.”
One of the main goals of the original concert was to not only educate people about who Matthew Shepard was and his importance, but to also humanize him. The organizers attempted to achieve this by sharing the video of his mother speaking about who he was, and his personality and interests. In addition, many of the choral movements emphasized the ordinary humanness of Matthew Shepard.
Dr. Pfitzer shared his own thoughts, saying, “I think the thing that spoke to me about this piece is that it relates to a story that is pretty gruesome, scary, and difficult to interact with, but the piece of music is very optimistic…it tries to speak to building a better future as opposed to just saying what happened. The reason I wanted to do it was because I think telling the story is still needed, especially in a way that would hopefully make us feel uplifted and ready to go make a better world as opposed to just making us feel sad.”
The concert educated the Deerfield community as a whole, which was one of the hopes of Dr. Pfitzer and Mr. Lee. Many students and teachers also discussed the musical pieces and Matthew Shepard’s story in the following classes. A variety of students and faculty expressed how touched they felt during the concert, and how impressed they were at the ability of the performers to convey so many emotions.
Josh Freedman ’26 said, “I was deeply touched by the Matthew Shepard performance, as it embraced the ideas of identity that are harder to come by. I felt that the spoken words of Lillian Regal mixed with the song perpetuated his memory in a meaningful way and opened students’ eyes to harsh realities.”
Dr. Pfitzer felt that the concert was a huge success, saying, “As artists, if we can help our audience feel something deeply, we’ve done our job. And so that part was the successful piece that I’ve heard about most. I think there were people who really felt something when they were watching the performance.”
Aside from the concert, there were also other events to raise awareness regarding the LGBT+ community. Mr. Lee and the Office of Inclusion and Community Life, working with the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA), held Spirit Day, where members of the community wore purple to support LGBT+ rights. Furthermore, the GSA made presentations at school meetings, and athletes wore purple socks during sports games to support the cause.
In the future, Deerfield Academy aims to continue Spirit Day and other events of the sort to continue raising awareness throughout the community. While the organizers of the events hope to put on concerts in the future similar to this, they are aware of the uniqueness of the pieces and situation.
Nevertheless, as Dr. Pfitzer said, Deerfield hopes the Matthew Shepard concert allowed someone who heard the performance “to understand the full message a little bit more, and understand how important it is for us to be together in a community, and hopefully all these things will work together to build a better community at Deerfield.”