My Life in the Theatre: The Laramie Project Diaries

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on October 9, 2009 - 12:51pm

by Seth Rogovoy
 
I've been honored with an invitation to participate in a production of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (An Epilogue), being staged at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass., on Monday, October 12, at 3 and 7.
 
The event is one of hundreds of staged readings of The Laramie Project that will be performed simultaneously in New York at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall  and more than 100 other theaters across the country on Monday.
 
 
The creators of the highly acclaimed play The Laramie Project, which since 2000 has been one of the most performed plays in America, will premiere a compelling and groundbreaking epilogue to the original piece.
 
 
The epilogue focuses on the long-term effect 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.
 
 
Barrington Stage's production includes actors well-known to Berkshire theatergoers such as Christopher Innvar, Debra Jo Rupp, Tandy Cronyn, Kevin Carolan, Jeremy Bobb, Thom Christopher, and Mark H. Dold.
 
 
Reprising a similar role I played in a first-grade production of Alice in Wonderland, I will perform as the Narrator in BSC's show. (Back then, I got the role because I was the only one who knew how to read. The director of this production will have to speak for himself as to why he cast me in this role.)
 
 
This will mark my first appearance in a stage production since college (where I played, among other roles, Teach in David Mamet's American Buffalo) and in high school before that (when I starred as Randall McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).
 
 
Needless to say, I am nervous and excited about this new endeavor. And so I will do what I do best -- I will write about the process. The first gathering of the entire cast takes place this evening at 5pm in Pittsfield, presumably where we will review how the weekend rehearsal process will take place.
 
 
Please check back here often over the course of the holiday weekend to read my updates on how things are going behind the scenes in staging this monumental and important piece of theater, one whose relevance, unfortunately, has not dimmed with time.
 
 
 

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