PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles Community Players plan auditions this weekend for a readers’ theater production of “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later,” a real-life drama focusing on the attitudes of the townspeople of Laramie, Wyo., 10 years after the brutal beating and death of young college student Matthew Shepard.
Auditions are set for 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday in the Green Room at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse, 1235 E Lauridsen Blvd.
The show will run Oct. 18, 19 and 20. Performance times will be 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18-19 and 2 p.m. Oct. 20.
This epilogue to “The Laramie Project,” performed by the Players in June 2018 in honor of the 20th anniversary of Shepard’s death, asks whether lasting change has come out of the crime and the world-wide reaction to it.
“Laramie: Ten Years Later” has been performed in theaters across the country.
The play will be performed as a readers’ theater, so learning lines is not necessary.
Auditioners will be asked to read portions of the script. There are many characters in the play; anyone who would like to be in it can be, according to organizers.
Several actors will play more than one part and no acting experience is necessary.
Stage and lighting crew members also are needed with no experience necessary.
In 1999, one year after Shepard was killed, The Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with local townspeople, ranchers, law enforcement, clergy and University of Wyoming personnel.
The resulting dramatization, “The Laramie Project,” entwined events immediately after Shepard’s murder with an exploration of the attitudes of the interviewees.
“The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” came to be when the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to conduct follow-up interviews with residents of Laramie, some of whom were featured in the earlier production.
The play debuted at 150 theaters across the U.S. on Oct. 12, 2009.
Much of the controversy surrounded the question of whether Shepard’s murder was a hate crime or a methamphetamine-driven robbery gone wrong, according to a press release.
Fueling the controversy was a documentary that focused on and promoted the drug and robbery hypothesis while the testimony of Shepard’s killers at the time admitted homophobia and used “gay panic” as a defense in their trials.
The Port Angeles Community Players’ June 2018 production was one of its best-attended Second Stage readers’ theater productions.
There will be talk-back sessions and counselors at each performance.
The show is directed by Janet Lucas, who directed the June 2018 production of “The Laramie Project.”
In addition to the two leads, there are 56 roles available for people of varying ages and genders.
Characters are:
• Various members of the Tectonic Theater Project, ranging in age from 20s to 50s.
• Various townspeople, ranchers, clergy, government officials, University of Wyoming personnel, law enforcement, 20/20 television show narrator and others.
• The perpetrators, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.
For more information, call Lucas at 360-461-1989.
