By Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber
On 6 October 1998, gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard left the Fireside Bar with Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The following day he was discovered on a prairie at the edge of town tied to a fence, brutally beaten, and close to death. Six days later, Matthew Shepard died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft. Collins, Colorado. On 14 November 1998, ten members of Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming and conducted interviews with the people of the town. Over the next year, the company returned to Laramie six times and conducted over 200 interviews. These texts became the basis for the play The Laramie Project.
Ten years later on 12 September 2008, five members of Tectonic returned to Laramie to try to understand the long-term effect of the murder. They found a town wrestling with its legacy and its place in history. In addition to revisiting the folks whose words riveted us in the original play, this time around, the company also spoke with the two murderers, McKinney and Henderson, as well as Matthew’s mother, Judy Shepard. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later is a bold new work, which asks the question: How does society write its own history?
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Andy Paris has made a career of developing new works for the stage and screen, including The Laramie Project (Emmy nomination), Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde by Moisés Kaufman, Lucie Tiberghien’s The Quiet Room, and Innocents by Rachel Dickstein. As a write ...
Greg Pierotti is co-author of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later. He is associate writer of The Laramie Project (2001 New York Drama Desk and Lortel Award nominee), and co-writer of The Laramie Project teleplay for HBO (2002 Emmy nominee). He is head writer of The People’s T ...
Leigh Fondakowski was the Head Writer of The Laramie Project and has been a member of Tectonic Theatre Project since 1995. She is an Emmy-nominated co-screenwriter for the adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO. Her work The People’s Temple has been performed under her dir ...
Stephen Belber’s plays have been produced on Broadway and in over 25 countries. They include Match, Tape, McReele, Fault Lines, The Power of Duff, Dusk Rings A Bell and many others. He was an Associate Writer/actor for The Laramie Project, and co-writer/actor on The Laramie P ...