I'm bouncing out of the house toward downtown Louisville in an hour to the Pamela Brown Theatre.My purpose for my night out is to check out the performance of The Laramie Project-Ten Years Later at 8 PM EDT.
Laramie is the hometown of the late Matthew Shepard, whose gruesome 1998 murder galvanized support for hate crimes legislation that has yet to pass Congress.
The Tectonic Theater Project conducted a series of interviews with Laramie residents in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder in order to better understand the community. Those interviews became the seeds in 2000 for the Laramie Project, one of the most performed plays in America.
Ten years after Matthew Shepard’s death, the Tectonic Theatre Project returned to Laramie to see how the community had changed since the murder.
“One of the things we found when we got there,” shared playwright Moisés Kaufman, “which greatly surprised us, was people in Laramie saying this was not a hate crime.”
“We found the people of Laramie still fighting their own history…their own story,” continued playwright Leigh Fondakowski.
Actors Theatre of Louisville is joining over 100 theatres in all 50 states and across the world premiering a stage reading of the Tectonic Theatre Project’s The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an epilogue to the original theatre piece. The evening will commence with a live Lincoln Center webcast address from Kaufman, followed by the Actors Theatre’s 2009/2010 Acting Apprentice Company reading of the piece.
The night concludes with a panel discussion led by the Fairness Campaign addressing the importance of Hate Crimes legislation protecting LGBTQ individuals, and what citizens can do to make the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act a reality.
Birthday girl and C-FAIR Co-chair Dawn Wilson will be taking part in the post performance panel discussion along with Director Michael Legg, Chris Hartman, Director of the Fairness Campaign, Michael Aldridge, Director of the ACLU-KY and a student leader from the University of Louisville.
Should be an enjoyable and informative evening at Actor's Theatre.