NEWS
The Laramie Project Ten Years Later Set for SUNY Cobleskill Presentation
COBLESKILL -
The Theater Project of Schoharie County and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally Union of SUNY Cobleskill are presenting "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later" on campus Thursday evening to remember the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard on October 6, 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming.
According to their press release:
On October 6, 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, tried to a fence, brutally beaten, and close to death. Six days later Matthew Shepard died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft. Collins, Colorado. On November 14, 1998, ten members 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 September 12, 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" asks the question, ‘How does society write its own history?’
After presenting the first of the two-play series at Teen Town in Golding Park on Friday evening, "The Laramie Project," the groups will be concluding with "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later" on Thursday night, 7:30 pm at Bouck Hall on SUNY Cobleskill's campus - thus completing the "Laramie Cycle" to achieve a better understanding of what occurred fifteen years ago in that sleepy western town and how that evening has effected everyone involved.