The Laramie Project
A staged reading of Tectonic Theater Company’s moving work
Directed by Catherine Gillet
Friday, September 13
7:00 PM
Tryon Fine Arts Center
Shakespeare & Friends is proud to present a dramatic reading of The Laramie Project as part of the Soundstage Series. Directed by Catherine Gillet, The Laramie Project, an example of verbatim/documentary style theater, is a powerful and incredibly moving play based on the hate crime murder of a young gay man, Matthew Shepard, in 1998. This riveting piece of award winning theater was created through the combined efforts of members of the NY based Tectonic Theater Company-- directors, writers, dramaturgs and actors-- who traveled to Laramie, Wyoming several times over the course of a year to conduct hundreds of interviews with inhabitants of the town and includes company members' own journal entries, testimony of family members and friends of Shepard, and published news reports. It is divided into three acts. Eight talented local actors will portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.
The Laramie Project runs approximately two hours, with one intermission. Please join us at Tryon Fine Arts Center’s indoor performance space The Pavilion. Tickets are $15 and available through Tryon Fine Arts Center.
The Laramie Project is a documentary play based on the true story of Matthew Shepard's murder in 1998, which created an international uproar. The play was written by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project located in New York City, after conducting interviews with Laramie, Wyoming residents. The play is based on transcripts of interviews, court case transcripts, and the community's reaction to the murder and surrounding media storm. It tells the stories of real people who lived in the center of one of this country's most controversial hate crimes.
The Laramie Project presents a deeply complex portrait of a community's response to an unthinkable tragedy. Many of the town’s residents were in disbelief that something so shocking could happen in their close knit and supportive community. In a review of the play in 2000, the New York Times wrote:
To some degree, Laramie is presented as a latter-day Grover's Corners, a cozy place where everyone appears to know everyone else's business and actually finds comfort in this. But if The Laramie Project nods conspicuously to Wilder, this play is ''Our Town'' with a question mark, as in ''Could this be our town?'' There are repeated variations by the citizens of Laramie on the statement ''It can't happen here,'' followed immediately by ''And yet it has.''
The play sustains it’s audience’s rapt attention through innovative and simple staging and brilliant, poetic and powerful writing. In this reading for Shakespeare & Friends, Director Catherine Gillet, provides a backdrop for a plethora of emotions: anger, sorrow, bewilderment and, most movingly, a very pronounced and defiant glimmer of hope.
The Laramie Project carries an important message about prejudice and tolerance in personal, social and local and world arenas. The play has also inspired efforts to combat divisive hate for all disenfranchised groups. The landmark Matthew Shepard Act was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Barak Obama in 2009, to include crimes motivated by a victim's gender, sexual orientation, or disability. A case can be made that this ground-breaking legislation grew out of the support of hundreds of thousands of theater patrons’ attendance at The Laramie Project in cities and towns all over the world. Perhaps there is no greater reason to show up for this beautiful, stirring and thought provoking evening, than to be a part of a community that supports the belief that Art can indeed effect change in a troubled and divided world.