State of the Arts Blog

The Laramie Project: 10 years later

How much can one town learn from a brutal hate crime in a decade?

Audiences will find out on October 12th when more than 120 theaters - including the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis - present a simultaneous staging of "The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later."

The piece is meant to serve as an epilogue to "The Laramie Project," a play created entirely from interviews with the residents of Laramie, Wyoming in the wake of the brutal murder of 21 year-old Matthew Shepard. Witnesses to Shepard's murder say it was motivated by hatred for gays, and the media coverage of his death brought attention to the need for hate crime legislation.

Now Tectonic Theater has returned with "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later," a look at how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. The play includes new interviews with Matthew's mother Judy Shepard and Matthew's murderer Aaron McKinney (currently serving dual life sentences), as well as follow-up interviews with many of the individuals from the original piece.