10/12/2026
More Than a Memory
Matthew Shepard
December 1, 1976 - October 12, 1998
Twenty-eight years ago today, Matthew Shepard died from injuries sustained in a brutal attack in Laramie, Wyoming.
Matthew was 21 years old: full of hopes, dreams, fears, and an entire lifetime that was needlessly stolen from him, his family, and his friends.
Now, his name is forever connected to an act of violence so egregious that it forced a nation to confront painful truth about the consequences of hatred, prejudice, and resulting brutality.
But Matthew Shepard is more than the way he died.
In the aftermath of his murder, a group of theater artists traveled to Laramie to listen. They spoke with the people who lived there, gathering their words, their memories, their grief, their anger, their contradictions, and their attempts to make sense of something almost impossible to comprehend.
From those conversations came The Laramie Project.
The resulting play is not simply about a murder, it’s about people; about a community forced to examine itself; about the things we say, the things we believe, the things we choose not to see, and the silence that sometimes speaks louder than words.
Next spring, our theater has the great privilege and profound responsibility of presenting The Laramie Project. We do not take that responsibility lightly.
Why? Because twenty-eight years later, the questions have not lost their relevance. Questions such as, “How do we respond when someone else’s humanity is treated as less valuable than our own?”
Theater cannot change what happened to Matthew Shepard….but it can ask us to listen, to examine ourselves, to recognize humanity in people whose lives may not resemble our own, and perhaps, most importantly: to remember that the stories we tell are not just about who we were, but about who we choose to become.
On this anniversary, we remember Matthew and the life he deserved to live. He would have been 50 this December. He deserved those years, he deserved kindness, he deserved to be safe. He deserved to live.
And THAT is why we must continue to tell his story.
