Posted by 66 on 9/5/2009, 11:35 am
Message modified by board administrator 9/5/2009, 11:36 am
THE LARAMIE PROJECT
The Life of An American Town After Matthew Shepard
AUDITIONS: Wed.-Thurs., Sept. 9-10 (6:30 – 9:00 p.m.)
Performances: Nov. 6-8 & 13-15, 2009
A Springfield Theatre Centre production at the Hoogland Center for the Arts
Directed by Phil Funkenbusch
The brutal attack on University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard on October 12, 1998 was a wake-up call society doesn’t get very often. It triggered an avalanche of media, a kind of national deathwatch until Shepard died five days later. The Laramie Project is the response of writer Moises Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theater Project, who went to Laramie, Wyoming, and conducted more than 200 interviews with townspeople and officials. The result is this inquiry into hate and the thoughts and feelings of an American town.
As one local states, Laramie became instantly notorious, “like Waco, or Jasper.” But The Laramie Project is not an exercise in self-righteous condemnation. It merely attempts to come to terms with what happened.
In the tradition of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the town of Laramie is brought to life as an ensemble of actors embody more than 60 different people in their own words. The result is a complex and sympathetic portrait of a town that dispels the simplistic myths and stereotypes of the national media, and shows the people of Laramie struggling with the aftermath of a horrific event that made them question their belief that “it can’t happen here.”
“I hope that you know the shameful and shocking story, but even if you have extensive knowledge, you will be held in rapt attention by this in-depth examination of just about every aspect of the background and foreground of the event, as seen and heard through the eyes and mouths of numerous witnesses, neighbors, indifferent or impassioned fellow citizens. There emerges a mosaic as moving and important as any you will see on the walls of the churches of the world.” ---- John Simon, New York Magazine, May 29, 2000.
In the original production, ten actors portrayed over 60 roles. This production could have eight, ten, twelve, twenty or thirty.
For more info.: contact Phil Funkenbusch
Home: 632-2490 cell: 414-5268 office: 785-6085
Email: phildeanf@yahoo.com
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