Hate crimes and healing: what can we learn? Rosebud School of the Arts aims to find out.

The Laramie Project (2000) is the work of Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project. The group visited Laramie five weeks after Shepard’s death and began interviewing the town’s inhabitants to try to make sense of the horrific event. Over the course of the next year, more than 200 interviews were conducted, and these interviews, along with published news reports and the company members’ own journal entries, formed the basis of The Laramie Project, now one of the most-produced plays in America. It will be presented by Rosebud School of the Arts second-year mentorship students on the BMO Studio Stage this spring, opening April 1.

The play is divided into two acts, and thirteen actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

”This is about what happens to a town when it is forced to really look at all the things people really believed in all their lives,” Mr. Kaufman said. ”A lot of the philosophy we heard from people was that Laramie was a live-and-let-live place. But I don’t know. I really don’t know what the truth is in that statement.”

Rosebud School of the Arts Education Director Paul Muir explains why this story was important to bring to the stage in Rosebud: “Hatred and intolerance do not get us anywhere good. We must speak out against it. Telling this story in Rosebud is a chance for us to step into this conversation with a point of view we can all agree on. Christians are asked to speak out against hatred when it occurs in our communities.”

Performance Details:

• April 1 – 22 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 4:30pm
• BMO Studio Stage, Rosebud, Alberta

Information & Bookings:

• For more information or to reserve tickets call Melanie at 1-800-267-7553 or email melaniew@rosebudtheatre.com.

For more information on The Laramie Project, please visit www.matthewshepard.org.