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The play based on the murder of a Wyoming college student has generated a second play that will be simultaneously performed at the UA and more than a hundred other theaters across the U.S. and abroad.

By Mario DiVetta, UApresents
October 9, 2009

The creators of the acclaimed play, "The Laramie Project," will premiere an epilogue to the original drama on Monday evening at Centennial Hall. Since it first opened in 2000, the original play has been one of the most performed dramas in America. A film of the play aired at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

The play is based on the highly publicized 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming.

The sequel, "The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later," will be performed as a staged reading Centennial and more than 100 other theaters in all fifty states, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Hong Kong and Australia on Oct. 12.

The writers include Tectonic Theater Project members Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber. The evening will start with a pre-show event broadcast from Alice Tully Hall in New York City. 

Featuring the Tectonic Theatre Company and special guests from the original film, the pre-performance event will unite audiences across the nation. Following the reading, the audience will rejoin the proceedings at Alice Tully Hall for a discussion with an expert panel to explore the continuing impact of "The Laramie Project." 

Presented on the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death, the reading will feature local actors and UA students and faculty under the direction of  Bobbi McKean, an associate professor at the UA School of Theatre Arts.

The epilogue focuses on the long-term effects on the city of Laramie from the murder of Shepard. It explores how Laramie has changed and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community.

The play also includes new interviews with Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard as well as Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the two men who were convicted and given life sentences for the murder. The writers also conducted follow-up interviews of Laramie residents from the original piece.

"The Tectonic Theater Project set out to find out how Laramie had changed in the 10 years since the murder of Matthew Shepard," said Moisés Kaufman, artistic director of the Tectonic Theater Project. "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 people in Laramie saying this was not a hate crime," Kaufman said

"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 project member Leigh 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 Greg Pierotti, the Tectonic Theater Project member who interviewed McKinney.

"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," said project member Andy Paris.