The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, An Epilogue Makes History

A month after Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998, New York’s Tectonic Theater Project trekked down there and conducted interviews with hundreds of locals—including those close to the family of the victim and perpetrators—to try and understand why such a horrific hate crime could have occurred. The result was The Laramie Project, a jarring, heartrending play that interspersed dozens of those interviews with journal entries from Tectonic members.

Fast forward, ten years later: The Laramie Project became something of a national phenomenon, easily one of the most performed productions of the past decade. HBO even made a film adaptation of it in 2002, starring Laura Linney, Peter Fonda, and Steve Buscemi.

Last year, the crew returned to the quiet Wyoming college town to see how, and if, things had changed. The result, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an Epilogue, follows the same format as its predecessor, but blows up the scale by orders of magnitude. This past Monday, the production saw its triumphant debut across over 150 theaters in 14 countries. The simultaneous stagings tied into an online interactive community, where participants were invited to blog, upload video and photos and exchange stories about their experiences in preparing and presenting the Epilogue in their communities.

One of the two productions staged locally took place at the Lab Theater at UT Austin, directed by MFA candidate Courtney Sale under the Department of Theatre and Dance. This time around, Tectonic was able to interview not only Judy Shepard, who's become something of a national hero for her tireless crusade for gay rights, but the murderers as well: Russell Henderson, the reluctant accomplice who confronts daily his own shame for not having intervened 'enough' during the beating, and Aaron McKinney, the expressionless thug who still admits, with a breathtaking frankness, that "as far as Matt is concerned, I don't have any remorse."

Photo by Brandon Hay

The Lab Theater reading was an admirable effort, coordinated as it was at such late notice. The cast of fourteen, including Cassidy C Browning, Stephen Low, and Professor Stephen Gerald, ably handled the task of embodying dozens of interviewees as they read from their transcripts. Unfortunately, the live web stream from Lincoln Center, where Judy Shepard and Glenn Close were to open and close the evening's performances, failed to pull up—bogged down, perhaps, by the sheer number of people tuning in around the world—but it proved to be a minor hiccup in an otherwise powerful performance.

Photo by Brandon Hay

One of the main points that continually resurfaces in Epilogue is the town's desire to "move on" from its past infamy. And, on the whole, it appears that Laramie has: the trooper who first came across Matthew, conscious but near death on the lonely road near the university, now tends horses. University of Wyoming undergrads, now two generations of students removed, vaguely recall the incident. The town has upgraded from a Wal-Mart to a Super Wal-Mart.

Professor Stephen Gerald. Photo by Brandon Hay

But the fact remains, as one interviewee aptly put it, "What do you want to move on to?" From the oblivious local newspaper editor's milquetoast insistence that "Laramie is not that kind of community," to the revisionist hit-piece 20/20 aired in 2006 perpetuating the false claim that the killings were merely a robbery gone wrong (a myth that Epilogue soundly debunks), it's apparent that the struggle between what many of the townsfolk want to remember and what actually transpired has yet to be resolved. With the number of hate crimes in the U.S. steady at some 7,500 each year and the fate of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act still to be decided in the Senate, it's apparent that what transpired in Laramie remains as relevant as ever.