La Jolla Playhouse to Present an Epilogue of The Laramie Project on October 12

Tony Award nominee Moises Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber, creators of the acclaimed The Laramie Project, have reunited to pen an epilogue to the groundbreaking work. A reading of the piece, The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, will be presented at California's La Jolla Playhouse on October 12, directed by Darko Tresnjak and starring Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright, Mare Winningham, Robert Foxworth and Stark Sands. Over 100 other theaters around the world will also present the new work on the same evening, including New York's own Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

In addition to Wright, Winningham, Foxworth and Sands, La Jolla's reading will feature San Diego Rep Artistic Director Sam Woodhouse and theater critic Anne Marie Welsh.

“We are honored to bring The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later to the Playhouse,” said La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley in a statement. “The murder of Matthew Shepard and its impact on the Laramie community is a truly powerful story. Now ten years later, our hope is that the epilogue deepens the exploration of Matthew’s death, and how it continues to reverberate."

The epilogue focuses on the long-term effects of the murder of Matthew Shepard on the town of Laramie. It explores how the town has changed and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. The play also includes new interviews with Matthew’s mother Judy Shepard and Mathew’s murderer Aaron McKinney, who’s serving two consecutive life sentences. The writers also conducted many follow-up interviews Laramie residents from the original piece, including Romaine Patterson, Reggie Fluty, Jedediah Shultz, Father Roger Schmidt, Jonas Slonaker, Beth Loffreda and others.

The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later is presented by the Tectonic Theater Project, which traveled to the town of Laramie, Wyoming, following the 1998 hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard to interview residents of the town and members of the Shepard family about the event. The interviews later comprised The Laramie Project, which made its off-Broadway debut in March 2000. The play, a landmark piece which highlighted the violence and prejudice lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face and the effect of Shepard's murder on the small town of Laramie, Wyoming, was later made into a film for HBO.