The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later… an Epilogue

The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later… an Epilogue
by Moises Kaufman
Tectonic Theater Project
Monday, October 12, 2009

On October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten and left tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie. He died in a Fort Collins hospital on October 12. A month after the murder, the members of the Tectonic Theater Project led by Moises Kaufman traveled to Laramie and interviewed people of the town. From those interviews they wrote the play “The Laramie Project,” which later became an HBO movie. In 2008, the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie and re-interviewed the same people. Has the murder had a lasting effect on Laramie? Has Laramie changed as a result? Has America changed?

The Epilogue Project will be presented in scores of communities across America on the evening of the 11th anniversary of Shepard’s murder. By joining together this way, the participants in each separate community, and collectively across the nation, engage to consider the conditions which led to this tragic event and to raise awareness about matters of civil rights, violence and bigotry.

A member of the Tectonic Theater Project will work with the University’s Theater students in a two-day residency using Kaufman’s “Moment Work” process to prepare them for a public reading. The cast, including both students and others from the community, will present the reading of the Epilogue in Gates Concert Hall.

“In returning to Laramie, Wyo., 10 years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the pressing question for all of us was: how has the town changed since 1998? But soon a different question arose: how do we measure that change?” Moises Kaufman, Newsweek

www.tectonictheaterproject.org