The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project
Author:
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 63
Release: 2012
Genre: Gay men
ISBN: 082222450X

THE STORY: On November 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, 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 November 14th, 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 September 12th, 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?"

The Meaning of Matthew

The Meaning of Matthew
Author: Judy Shepard
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2009-09-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101140186

“The Meaning of Matthew is Judy Shepard’s passionate and courageous attempt to understand what no mother should have to understand, which is why her son was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in the fall of 1998. It is a vivid testimony to a life cut short, and testimony too, to the bravery and compassion of Judy and Dennis—Matthew’s parents—as they struggle to survive a grief that won’t go away.”—Larry McMurty, author of Terms of Endearment and Lonesome Dove Today the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but until 1998, he was just Judy Shepard’s son. In this remarkably candid memoir, Judy Shepard shares the story behind the headlines. Interweaving memories of Matthew and her family with the challenges of confronting her son’s death, Judy describes how she handled the crippling loss of her child in the public eye, the vigils and protests held by strangers in her son’s name, and ultimately how she and her husband gained the courage to help prosecutors convict her son's murderers. The Meaning of Matthew is more than a retelling of horrific injustice that brought the reality of inequality and homophobia into the American consciousness. It is an unforgettable and inspiring account of how one ordinary woman turned an unthinkable tragedy into a vital message for the world.

The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
Author: Moises Kaufman
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0804170401

The Laramie Project, one of the most-performed theater pieces in America, has become a modern classic. In this expanded edition, it is joined by an essential and moving sequel to the original play. On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard’s death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of the town, the event was deeply personal. In the aftermath, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with its citizens. From the transcripts, the playwrights constructed an extraordinary chronicle of life in the town after the murder. In The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, the troupe revisits the town a decade after the tragedy, finding a community grappling with its legacy and its place in history. The two plays together comprise an epic and deeply moving theatrical cycle that explores the life of an American town over the course a decade.

October Mourning

October Mourning
Author: Leslea Newman
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1536215775

A masterful poetic exploration of the impact of Matthew Shepard’s murder on the world. On the night of October 6, 1998, a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was kidnapped from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die. Gay Awareness Week was beginning at the University of Wyoming, and the keynote speaker was Lesléa Newman, discussing her book Heather Has Two Mommies. Shaken, the author addressed the large audience that gathered, but she remained haunted by Matthew’s murder. October Mourning, a novel in verse, is her deeply felt response to the events of that tragic day. Using her poetic imagination, the author creates fictitious monologues from various points of view, including the fence Matthew was tied to, the stars that watched over him, the deer that kept him company, and Matthew himself. More than a decade later, this stunning cycle of sixty-eight poems serves as an illumination for readers too young to remember, and as a powerful, enduring tribute to Matthew Shepard’s life. Back matter includes an epilogue, an afterword, explanations of poetic forms, and resources.

Moment Work

Moment Work
Author: Moises Kaufman
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-04-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1101971789

A detailed guide to the collaborative method developed by the acclaimed creators of The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency--destined to become a classic. A Vintage Original. By Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams with Leigh Fondakowski, Andy Paris, Greg Pierotti, Kelli Simpkins, Jimmy Maize, and Scott Barrow. For more than two decades, the members of Tectonic Theater Project have been rigorously experimenting with the process of theatrical creation. Here they set forth a detailed manual of their devising method and a thorough chronicle of how they wrote some of their best-known works. This book is for all theater artists—actors, writers, designers, and directors—who wish to create work that embraces the unbridled potential of the stage.

Gross Indecency

Gross Indecency
Author: Moisés Kaufman
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 92
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780822216490

THE STORY: In early 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, left a card at Wilde's club bearing the phrase posing somdomite. Wilde sued the Marquess for criminal libel. The defense denounced Wild

Essentials of Stage Management

Essentials of Stage Management
Author: Peter Maccoy
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-02-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1408149699

Good stage management is key to the smooth running of any theatrical production and, as technology continues to develop and regulations tighten, the responsibilities of the stage manager have never been greater. In this essential guide, Peter Maccoy examines the qualities and skills necessary for effective management, stressing the importance of understanding both the creative and the technical processes involved in theatre. From negotiating contracts through to rehearsals, performance and post-production, Essentials of Stage Management is packed with invaluable advice on every aspect of the job and every type of theatre.

Losing Matt Shepard

Losing Matt Shepard
Author: Beth Loffreda
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2001-11-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231118597

Explores why the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, set off a media frenzy and continues to haunt the nation, and examines how the politics of sexuality unfolded in the small town.

Stories from Jonestown

Stories from Jonestown
Author: Leigh Fondakowski
Publisher:
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 9780816681730

The saga of Jonestown didnOCOt end on the day in November 1978 when more than nine hundred Americans died in a mass murder-suicide in the Guyanese jungle. While only a handful of people present at the agricultural project survived that day in Jonestown, more than eighty members of Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, were elsewhere in Guyana on that day, and thousands more members of the movement still lived in California. Emmy-nominated writer Leigh Fondakowski, who is best known for her work on the play and HBO film "The Laramie Project," spent three years traveling the United States to interview these survivors, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy. Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors as they tell their unforgettable stories. Collectively this is a record of ordinary people, stigmatized as cultists, who after the Jonestown massacre were left to deal with their grief, reassemble their lives, and try to make sense of how a movement born in a gospel of racial and social justice could have gone so horrifically wrongOCotaking with it the lives of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. As these survivors look back, we learn what led them to join the Peoples Temple movement, what life in the church was like, and how the trauma of JonestownOCOs end still affects their lives decades later. What emerges are portrayals both haunting and hopefulOCoof unimaginable sadness, guilt, and shame but also resilience and redemption. Weaving her own artistic journey of discovery throughout the book in a compelling historical context, Fondakowski delivers, with both empathy and clarity, one of the most gripping, moving, and humanizing accounts of Jonestown ever written.