In the early-morning hours of Oct. 7, 1998, an openly gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard hopped into a car with Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. The two strangers had offered Shepard a ride home from the Fireside, a local bar in the university town of Laramie, Wyoming. Eighteen hours later, Shepard was discovered unconscious, savagely beaten and tied to a wooden fence on the outskirts of town. He was found by Aaron Kreifels, a bicyclist who — when he first happened upon Shepard's bloodied body — believed it was a scarecrow.

At 12:53 a.m. on Oct. 12, 1998, after spending days in a coma and on life support, Shepard succumbed to the effects of a massive brainstem injury sustained when he was pistol-whipped by one of his assailants. He died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his mother, Judy; father, Dennis; and younger brother, Logan, at his bedside. Henderson and McKinney were arrested and tried for the crime, and each is serving two consecutive life terms.

Matthew Shepard's brutal murder turned the world's attention to the issue of violence against homosexuals and spawned a nationwide push for stricter state and federal hate-crime laws.

Federal hate-crimes legislation, which has been amended numerous times and attached to unrelated bills, remains in limbo; but advocates of the legislation are hopeful. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (aka the Matthew Shepard Act, which includes expanded protections based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disabilities) is now attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010. It has been passed by the House and the Senate and is awaiting finalization. Many supporters of tougher hate-crimes legislation are optimistic that it will become law by the end of this year. President Barack Obama has promised to see the Matthew Shepard Act become law.

Despite the political drive and media frenzy spurred by Matthew Shepard's death and the highly publicized trials of his killers (they were not convicted of a hate crime; no criminal statute for it existed in Wyoming — and one still does not exist there), the very human side of this tragedy hasn't faded from collective memory.

Five weeks after Shepard's death, members of the New York-based Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted hundreds of interviews with residents who shared their experiences and opinions about the crime and how it had affected their town. The resulting play, The Laramie Project, has become one of the most staged plays in the country in recent years, and it continues to serve as a valuable tool for educating communities here and abroad about homophobia, tolerance, and the value of grassroots activism in the face of discrimination. Through the production, schools, universities, outreach organizations, and others continue to deliver ardent truths that blogs, column inches, and prime-time rhetoric simply cannot capture adequately: Matthew Shepard was a human being; McKinney and Henderson are human beings; and we are all subject to the complexities of anger, hate, fear, remorse, grief, and indifference.

In June 2008, months before the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, members of the Tectonic Theater Project (Andy Paris, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Steven Belber, and Moisés Kaufman, the company's artistic director and the lead playwright of The Laramie Project) returned to Laramie and re-interviewed people they had spoken to for the original production. The result is The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an Epilogue, which focuses on how the town has been affected by the Matthew Shepard case over the past decade.

On Oct. 12, 2009 — 11 years after Shepard's death — 80-minute readings of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later will take place simultaneously in more than 120 theaters around the world, including stages in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The Lensic Performing Arts Center hosts the reading locally, and Lensic executive director Robert Martin is among the eight-member cast. (In other cities, the cast is larger than 18 players). Martin and his cast mates are quite familiar with The Laramie Project, but until now, none of them have publicly performed or read material related to the project.

"I was already interested in that mode of theater," Martin told Pasatiempo. "In the tradition of the WPA Federal Theatre Project during the 1930s, Tectonic has always been instrumental in focusing and utilizing the power of collective memory. They embody the impact that theater can have in reflecting the consciousness of a particular time and place. And here's an opportunity, on a fairly large scale, to finally ask: What has really changed? Far beyond the base brutality of the Shepard murder, it's a chance to explore what happens everywhere, every day — not just in Laramie after the cameras and reporters have gone home. Santa Fe thinks of itself as a progressive community, and so does Laramie. Both have seen their fair share of bigotry. The material strikes a chord here."

Martin also respects Tectonic's endeavors regarding the Shepard story because "they didn't try to bring Matt into sainthood. They humanized the situation first and didn't try to politicize it. They asked, What is hate?, and challenged people to see it for what it was. It's not just a person, a victim, or an aggressor. It's never a black-and-white story."

With the Lensic's community and education outreach program in mind, Martin and the Lensic teamed up with Tectonic in June this year and paid a fee to be a partner and co-presenter for the reading. "It was initially a leap of faith, but we immediately grasped the community value of the project," he said, "and the seed money we provided to Tectonic translated into us being able to bring Andy Paris to Santa Fe." Paris, a co-writer on the new production as well as a writer and actor in the original play, workshopped the Santa Fe cast and spent some time with students from Santa Fe's Desert Academy, who plan to mount their own production of The Laramie Project in 2010. With the Lensic cast, Paris executed a series of "moment workshops," theatrical exercises that encouraged the actors — who portray four to six characters apiece — to embrace the pure dialogue, rather than rely on a predetermined character study or stage layout. The minimal set design and blocking are not set in stone by Tectonic, and with every script change, director Acushla Bastible and the cast — who are participating for no fee — remain flexible. Photographer/videographer Jason Jaacks, who worked on the documentary team for SITE Santa Fe's Seventh International Biennial and spent time documenting HIV/AIDS in Africa, has volunteered to create video and/or still-photo backdrops for the reading.

Some interviews conducted in Laramie were videotaped, but cast members were left to their own devices, Martin said. "We didn't go into depth regarding how big or tall characters were, what their accents were, and we didn't really explore their backgrounds based on source material. The point is to have us find the characters ourselves, to inhabit these voices in a way that relates the universality of the story itself."

Creators and performers of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later are closely guarding the script until opening night, and as of Sept. 23, Martin said that changes were still being made. "We just got the script a few weeks ago, and we knew some revisions would be coming; it's possible more will surface. It's their [Tectonic's] piece, and we're committed to honoring any alterations they deem necessary." In an Associated Press story dated Sept. 28, Tectonic writer/actor Greg Pierotti revealed that portions of interviews he conducted with convicted killer McKinney within the last nine months would be included in the follow-up readings. McKinney's statements, as dictated by Pierotti, reflect the kind of deep-seated anti-gay sentiments that still exist, regardless of the efforts of The Laramie Project and the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Paris and the other writers returned to Laramie last year for two main reasons. "First," Paris told Pasatiempo by phone from New York, "as much as some people in Laramie might not want to remember it, their city is the touchstone of this incident. With our work, the national impact of The Laramie Project, and the work that Judy [Shepard] has done with the Matthew Shepard Foundation, her son's fate and Laramie's fate have remained intertwined. Also, we've always believed that Laramie was ideologically in line with the rest of the country, and the national dialogue about hate-crimes legislation and civil rights for all people has certainly been ramped-up over the past 10 years."

The return of Tectonic's writers to Laramie was met with mixed emotions. "The first time, there was actually less suspicion and resistance," Paris said. "We didn't even know what we were going to do with the interview material after we gathered it, and at that point, the town of Laramie wasn't dealing with 10 years of being immediately identified with a hate crime by the outside world." Responses to the writers' arrival, Paris said, ranged from "thank goodness you're back" to "we don't need to draw more negative attention to ourselves; we want the label of bigotry — and you — to just go away."

Paris said that some people at the University of Wyoming, where Matthew was a student, had reservations about participating in the follow-up. "A lot of folks we kept up with still have the same views on the Matthew Shepard murder that they did 10 years ago," he said, "but we live in a technological age where people can and usually do instantly react to something that angers them or makes them feel uncomfortable. There was still some fear of retaliation, which told me that there were still some pockets of deeply rooted bigotry and ignorance there regarding the issues we were intending to confront. Even some people at the University of Wyoming theater department reacted negatively to the idea of performing the epilogue. Some of them were still wounded by the events of October 1998, and they were tired of Laramie being the epicenter of the national hate-crimes-against-gays issue. There was a lot of concern at first about what our real intentions were."

Initially, the University of Wyoming theater department requested an advance copy of the script before agreeing to mount the reading. It is rare, Paris admitted, for any theater to approve a reading without having access to the script first, but he still wondered whether the subject matter played a role in that request. The University was fully aware of Tectonic's previous work: Tectonic performed the original production at the University of Wyoming Fine Arts Center's Main Stage on Nov. 29, 2000.

Paris looks forward to the readings, but he almost seems more excited about the aftermath. "I mean this in the best way possible: expectations for the readings are set low, and that's a rather important thing. Tectonic isn't in the business of play-making. We're about the art and science of structure. We're asking, How can we construct narratives that spark discourse in a community? And then we and theater groups figure out how to present that narrative in an engaging, entertaining way. This reading is a huge gift. It's a nation-sized workshop. It's not only about interacting and getting the work out there — what we're doing on Oct. 12 is going to teach us mounds about what we've written and how to move forward with the material and share it with more people."
Please hold your virtual applause
Tectonic Theater Project is going high tech for its newest chapter in collaborative community-theater interaction. In venues where it can be arranged — and the Lensic Performing Arts Center is one of them rformances of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an Epilogue will be preceded by a live-video feed from the production at Lincoln Center in New York. Presenters who will offer background on the new play include actress Glenn Close and Judy Shepard — Matthew Shepard's mother and the chair of the Matthew Shepard Foundation (matthewshepard.org).

After the performance, audience members are encouraged to send questions to the Tectonic writers and actors via Twitter (twitter.com/tectonictheater), and select responses will be broadcast on the Web and through the live link-up. The post-performance Q & A will be moderated by Neda Ulaby of National Public Radio. In mid-September, Tectonic also established an online community for The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (community.laramieproject.org), connecting activists, actors, directors, teachers, students, journalists, bloggers, and well-wishers. According to Robert Martin, executive director of the Lensic and a cast member, the reading at the Lensic will be viped, and in the future, segments of it may be uploaded to the Internet in conjunction with the online community. At first, Martin worried about the post-performance webcast. "We are dedicated to presenting the play in its entirety," he said, "and only after we're done onstage will Twittering be allowed. Out of respect for the cast, the director, the material, and the audience, it's important that mobile gadgets don't come out until we're completely done."

Details:
The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an Epilogue
6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12
Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., $15, students and children $10; 988-1234
For information on Albuquerque performances, contact the South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway Blvd. S.E., Albuquerque, 505-848-1320, or see eqnm.org

This article appears in the Oct. 9, 2009 issue of Pasatiempo