“Laramie Project Epilogue” to Premiere Locally at Guilford
Guilford will be one of over 100 sites worldwide to host the simultaneous premiere of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, An Epilogue Monday, Oct. 12, on the anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder in Wyoming. The staged reading will take place at 8 p.m. in Dana Auditorium on campus. The event is free and open to the public.
The Laramie Project, which premiered in 2000, is a theatre production based on interviews conducted in Laramie, Wyo., in the days after Shepard was beaten and tied to a fence in October 1998. He died six days later. His murder became a watershed historical moment in Americahighlighting violence and prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
The epilogue focuses on the long-term effects of the murder on the town of Laramie. It explores how the town has changed in 10 years and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. The play includes new material based on interviews with Matthew’s mother Judy Shepard and Matthew’s murderer Aaron McKinney, who is serving two consecutive life sentences.
Guilford’s production is directed by Professor of Theatre Studies Jack Zerbe and production managed by senior theatre major Allison Martin, president of Revelers, a student theatre organization. It features an all-student cast that includes Martha Adams-Cooper, Kieran Brackbill, Palmer Hicks, David Kinchen, Alex Knox, Olivia Shure, Eric Steginsky, Natalie Streiter, Puja Tolton and Elizabeth Wray.
On Oct. 12, the play will be performed in New York at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and in over 100 other theaters in all 50 states, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Hong Kong and Australia.
Following the performance, a Web cast will be available for a live question-and-answer session with members of the Tectonic Theater Project, producers of the original play and the epilogue. Questions will be asked via Twitter and other social media from the venues all over the country.
The Tectonic Theater Project will also launch an online community at www.LaramieProject.org. Participants can blog, upload video and photos and share their stories about the play, experiences in preparing and presenting the epilogue in their communities. The members of Tectonic Theater Project will be active participants in the online community, offering participants feedback and encouragement.
Tectonic Theater Project members and playwrights Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris, and Stephen Belber traveled to Laramie a month after Shepard’s murder in 1998, and returned last year to conduct follow-up interviews to be used in the epilogue.
“The Tectonic Theater Project set out to find out how Laramie had changed in the 10 years since the murder of Matthew Shepard,” said Kaufman, who is also the company’s artistic director. “When we arrived, we were forced to confront the question, ‘How do you measure change in a community?’ One of the things we found when we got there, which greatly surprised us, was how many people in Laramie were trying to say this was not a hate crime.”
"We found the people of Laramie still fighting to own their own history, their own identity, their own story, and part of that is shaped by how they understand what happened that night to Matthew,” said Fondakowski.
“Creating the epilogue also gave us the opportunity to talk to Aaron McKinney about his crime, what his thinking is about it now, and what his experience has been in prison over the past decade,” said Pierotti, the company member who interviewed Shepard’s killer.
“We were also able to speak with Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard, whose striking transformation from privately grieving mother to civil rights activist has captured the nation’s attention,” Paris said.
For more information, visit www.laramieproject.com or contact Guilford College at 336-316-2341.
Sept. 30, 2009