The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later Comes to College Park

Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center to Host One of 140 National Readings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Andrew Zender, azender@umd.edu
(301) 405-8151

September 24, 2009 — College Park, Md. — One decade after the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to interview residents about how their community grappled with the killing. The result, an 80-minute production entitled The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, will be featured at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s Dekelboum Concert Hall on Monday – October 12 at 8 p.m. There is no admission fee for this event.

The Center is one of approximately 140 sites nationwide – and one of only two in the metro DC area – to host the public readings on October 12, the 11th anniversary of Shepard’s death. This event is presented by the Center as part of the University of Maryland’s Semester on Peace.

Written by Tectonic Theater Project members Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Andy Paris, Greg Pierotti and Steven Belber, The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later finds the cast members revisiting the community and residents of Laramie, Wyoming to follow up on their 1998 investigation, The Laramie Project. Time Magazine called that first production “a pioneering work and a powerful stage event.”

The interviews, stories and testimony collected during the current project serve as the basis for the play and its investigation of the long-term cultural impact of the Shepard murder, which has become a rallying cry for gay rights and hate-crime laws. New interviews with Shepard’s mother, Judy Shepard, are featured in the epilogue, along with interviews with Shepard’s murderer, Aaron McKinney, who is serving dual life sentences.

The evening will start with a pre-show event broadcast link to Alice Tully Hall in NYC. Featuring the Tectonic Theatre Company and special guests, the pre-performance event will unite audiences in theatres across the nation who are about to experience the epilogue. Following the reading, participants will rejoin the proceedings at Alice Tully Hall for a lively discussion with an expert panel to explore the continuing impact of The Laramie Project.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is located at the intersection of University Boulevard (Route 193) and Stadium Drive in College Park, on the campus of the University of Maryland. A parking garage is located across the street from the Center.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is funded by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive. Funding for the Maryland State Arts Council is also provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Additional support is generously provided by a grant from the Leading College and University Presenters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and by a generous grant from The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.