The Ohio University School of Theater is opening its 2004-05 season with The Laramie Project
a play written after conducting more than 200 interviews with the residents of Laramie, the college town where Matthew Shepard was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in 1998.
The play opened last night and will run every Wednesday through Saturday in the Elizabeth Evans Baker Theatre in Kantner Hall for the rest of the month.
Oct. 12 marked the sixth anniversary of Shepard's death and the entire month of October is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Month, making it appropriate for the play to run this month.
The Laramie Project is directed by School of Theater faculty member Shelley Delaney, who was most recently nominated for a 2004 Joseph Jefferson award for her performance in Free Man of Color. The
Chicago-based award honors the best of the city's professional theater.
I think it's very very good timing and I think it means it makes for more conversation because of the timing
Delaney said. With that said
I think it's a play that whenever it's done there is going to be controversy
and there is going to be conversation. And I think that both controversy and conversation are good.
Four weeks after Shepard's murder, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, a group of 10 New Yorkers, went to Laramie, Wyo., to explore the town. After almost two years of research, the theater company created a moving play about the small college town of Laramie, and explores hate, intolerance, bigotry and homophobia in today's culture, according to a press release from OU Communications and Marketing.
Cast member Ashley Goehring, a junior theater major, said the play shows a bigger picture surrounding the hate crime.
I think it has the ability to change a lot of perspectives
she said. I think it's important for people to see this show
and that's something that I rarely feel.
She said the characters in the play are real people. These are their real names
she said. Nothing's been saturated. Nothing's changed. This is from tape
their interviews. It is exactly word for word. And with that
nothing's contrived.
