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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > October > 09 > Entry
The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue
In 1998, shortly after gay university students Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyo., the Tectonic Theater Project created a somewhat documentary-style play based on more than 200 interviews with Shepard’s friends and Laramie locals.
Shephaed was kidnapped, robbed, pistol-whipped and left for dead tied to a fence on a lonely stretch of road in Wyoming. He died five days after his attack.
‘The Laramie Project,’ became a landmark play as call-to-action against hate crimes and as a meaningful means to explore how our contemporary culture literally explains itself in the first-person.
Now, with ‘The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue’ the playwrights explore how the town of Laramie has changed — or not — and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. Tectonic Theatre artistic director Moises Kauffman and his colleagues conducted the interviews just last month.
Monday, on the eleventh anniversary of Shepard’s death, more than 140 theaters around the will perform “10 Years Later, Epilogue” while others will Web cast a performance from Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York where Glenn Close will host a pre- and post-show discussion with Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, participating.
Here in Austin, Zach Theatre, which staged ‘The Laramie Project’ in 2002 in its Central Texas premiere, will offer a staged reading of “10 Years Later, Epilogue” along with a live Web cast of the Lincoln Center pre- and post-show discussions. The Zach event is a fundraiser for Out Youth Austin.
And the University of Texas’ department of theater and dance will offer two staged readings along with the Lincoln Center Web cast.
The national ‘Laramie Project’ event has good news to dovetail with. On Thursday, after several attempts over the years, the U.S. House of Representative voted to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation. The bill — known as the Matthew Shepard Act — will now go to the Senate for a vote before it can become law
‘The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue’
7 p.m. Monday. Kleberg Stage, $20. Proceeds benefit Out Youth Austin. 476-0541. www.zachscott.com
7 and 9 p.m. Monday. Lab Theatre, Winship Building, 23rd and San Jacinto streest. Free. www.finearts.utexas.edu/tad
Image: Martin Burke in the 2002 Zach Theatre production of ‘The Laramie Project.’ Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
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