Published in the December 2, 2016 edition
MELROSE — Come join Melrose Drama as it presents the impactful and thought provoking production The Laramie Cycle at the Melrose Performing Arts Center, located at the Veterans Memorial Middle School, Dec. 2 to 4.
The first play in the Cycle, The Laramie Project, will be performed on Friday, Dec. 2, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 3, at 1 p.m. with the second play in the cycle, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, presented on Saturday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 4, at 1 p.m.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students and seniors and will be available at the door.
The Laramie Cycle, directed by Adam Schuler, is a two part production written by Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project. The first play in the Cycle The Laramie Project recounts the tragic death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was beaten to death in the small town of Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. Over the next several weeks, Matthew’s story became a national news sensation. The Laramie Project, is a series of word-for-word real-life interviews conducted with over 200 people from the town of Laramie. It is both a retelling of the events that transpired and a portrait of the residents and town of Laramie in the year following Matthew’s murder.
The second play in the Cycle, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, takes place 10 years later in 2008, when five members of the Tectonic Project returned to Laramie to try to understand the long-term effect of the murder. They found a town wrestling with its legacy and its place in history. In addition to revisiting the folks whose words riveted audiences in the original play, Tectonic also spoke with the two murderers, McKinney and Henderson, as well as Matthew’s mother, Judy Shepard. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, is an important and bold work, which asks the question, “How does society write its own history?”
The Laramie Cycle has been seen by over 30 million people and has been described by critics as “nothing short of stunning, not to be missed” and as “a pioneering work and a powerful stage event.” For more information on the production, please see the Melrose Drama webpage at https://melrosedrama.wordpress.com or the Melrose Drama Facebook page.
Come see this important work and thank you for supporting the arts in Melrose.
