News
EDWARD ALBEE RETURNS TO UH
September 17, 2009 - For 15 years, Edward Albee brought out the best in the University of Houston's student playwrights. Through classes and workshops, the award winning author shared his creative insights with young writers eager to transplant their stories from the page to the stage. This spring, Albee will return to the university for an encore.
Albee will serve as a UH distinguished professor of playwriting for the spring 2010 semester.
"I enjoy the learning experience of teaching, as well as the enthusiasm and intuition of the students," Albee said. Albee, the wordsmith behind classic plays such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will teach Playwriting III for UH's School of Theatre & Dance. The curriculum is designed for graduate theater and creative writing students, who will be handpicked by Albee himself.
Read the full story at the UH News Page.
THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER (AN EPILOGUE)
PREMIERES IN OVER 100 CITIES ON OCTOBER 12, 2009
TECTONIC THEATER PROJECT LAUNCHS ONLINE COMMUNITY WWW.LARAMIEPROJECT.ORG
The University of Houston School of Theare & Dance will present the Houston reading on October 12, 2009 in the Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre in the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Tickets are free and can be reserved by calling 713-743-2929.
7:00 pm - live feed from NYC; welcome by host Glenn Close
7:30 pm - reading
9:00 pm - discussion via Twitter with NYC production team
The creators of the highly acclaimed play The Laramie Project will premiere a compelling and groundbreaking epilogue to the original piece. Entitled THE LARAMIE PROJECT: 10 YEARS LATER, the play will be performed in New York at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and over 100 other theaters in all fifty states, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Hong Kong and Australia on October 12, 2009. The writers of this play are Tectonic Theater Project members Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris, and Stephen Belber.
The epilogue focuses on the long-term effects of the murder of Matthew Shepard on the town of Laramie. It explores how the town has changed and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. The play also includes new interviews with Matthew’s mother Judy Shepard and Mathew’s murderer Aaron McKinney, who’s serving two consecutive life sentences. The writers also conducted many follow-up interviews Laramie residents from the original piece, including, Romaine Patterson, Reggie Fluty, Jedediah Shultz, Father Roger Schmidt, Jonas Slonaker, Beth Loffreda and others.
In tandem with the Premiere, an online interactive community will be launched where participants can blog, upload video and photos and share their stories about the play, experiences in preparing and presenting the Epilogue in their communities. The members of Tectonic Theater Project will be active participants in the online community, offering participants feedback and encouragement.
“The Tectonic Theater Project set out to find out how Laramie had changed in the ten years since the murder of Matthew Shepard. When we arrived, we were forced to confront the question, ‘How do you measure change in a community?’ One of the things we found when we got there, which greatly surprised us, was people in Laramie saying this was not a hate crime,” said Moises Kaufman, Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project.
"We found the people of Laramie still fighting to own their own history, their own identity, their own story, and part of that is shaped by how they understand what happened that night to Matthew,” continued Leigh Fondakowski.
“Creating the epilogue also gave us the opportunity to talk to Aaron McKinney about his crime, what his thinking is about it now, and what his experience has been in prison over the past decade,," said Greg Pierotti, the company member who interviewed Aaron. "We were also able to speak with Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard, whose striking transformation from privately grieving mother to civil rights activist has captured the nation’s attention,” concluded Andy Paris.