The Laramie Project - 10 years later

2001 West Coast premiere production of The Laramie Project at Berkeley Repertory Theatre

The Laramie Project play is based on the true story of Matthew Shepard. in October 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming.

I and many others were outraged and deeply saddened by the situation, not only because a young man was killed but because it was due to the fact that he was a gay man.

10 years there is now an epilogue to The Laramie Project. Tonight more than a hundred theaters around the country will perform readings of the new play.

There is a reason for the added epilogue. Playright Moises Kaufman explains that the reason the epilogue exists is because, "we tend to think of story, and history specifically, as one thing." "But the most exciting narratives are the ones that combine many different points of view, and many different people who tell it."

To tell Matthew Shepard's story, Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theater Project utilized over 200 interviews that they conducted not long after Shepard's murder. The Laramie Project blends performances of many of those interviews.

For Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard has stated that The Laramie Project has kept her son's story alive as well as educated others about bigotry.

Matthew Shepard murder was used to strengthen the argument for hate-crimes legislation.

Six years after the killing however, the news program 20/20 reported that Shepard may have been using methamphetamine and may have been a drug dealer.

20/20 also reported that prosecutor Cal Rerucha believed that Shepard's killers, McKinney and Henderson had been on a meth binge in the days before meeting Shepard and therefore the murder was persuaded by drug use.

Playwright Moises Kaufman believes the 20/20 story was "terrible journalism" that "changed the nature of the dialogue." Kaufman set out to debunk the 20/20 story with the new Laramie Project epilogue.

Kaufman and colleagues returned to Laramie last year, re-interviewing many of the people they'd met a decade ago.

"One of the things we do in the play," says Kaufman, "is we go back and ask investigators ... and we go back over trial transcripts, and we prove that it was a hate crime."

Rob Debree from the Albany County Sheriff's Office in Laramie has stated in one of the newer interviews, "We've proven that there were no drugs on board with McKinney and Henderson — just none."

According to a recent article from NPR, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski wrote anarticle (read an excerpt) for Harper's magazine in 1999.

Wypijewski states, "Of course it had to do with homophobia. Of course it had to do with drugs. Of course it had to do with violence in the culture."

She says she is disatisfied with the 20/20 report AND The Laramie Project play as she feels both stories offer too narrow of an explanation the killing of Shepard.

"If you say 'It's just about hate,' or 'It's just about drugs,' you so simplify the story," Wypijewski says.

"Emblematic stories need emblematic victims," saod Wypijewski. "So Matthew needed to be an emblematic victim. And as soon as you have to do that, you start creating a kind of myth."

The Laramie Project: 10 years later
(In October of 2008, ten years following the killing of Matthew Shepard, members of Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to interview again the people who participated in the original Laramie Project, for the purpose of writing a new play, as an Epilogue. This video, edited by Brian Kates, is a short sampling of some of their responses. The full Epilogue will be performed live, on October 12, in 100 theaters on the same night)