Hello All Actors' Mission,

Well, it's been a busy month, and September promises to be busy as well as we build to our performance dates. In case you haven't heard, our production of The Laramie Project will take place October 2, 3, 4, and 5.

What follows is a brief summary of the progress made on various aspects of the production. I hope you will respond in two ways. First, you are invited to volunteer to help out on the production itself. Second, you can start to talk up this production to your friends and relatives. I am confident that this production will be outstanding and an important event for our troupe, our audience, and our community.

The Cast
Auditions were held in July, and I want to thank the twenty-one people who showed up. I believe we have assembled an exceptional cast: Alix Boyton, Jessica Burgess, Lance Diehl, Kathy Graham, Nina Kessner, Micah Parrish, Donovan Rawlings, Jared Schwab, and Jeff Varley. We are well into rehearsals, and I am thrilled with the skill, dedication and love these players are putting into their performance. This is a difficult play to master both technically and emotionally. I just want to encourage you to support these people who are putting their time, heart, and soul into this play.

The Production Staff
Certain responsibilities have been assigned. Aaron Volner did a great job as Assistant Director, until he had to get away to college last week. Roy Hansen has taken on the especially difficult job of Stage Manager. Mike Jeffery will be doing Host/House duties again, and Brad Russell will be doing the Lights. Donovan Rawlings will head the Newspaper Publicity, and Tom Zuehlsdorff will do the Radio. Erik Hamm is our Technical Advisor. Kirsten Mundschenk has taken on Food Coordinator, which is definitely a new role for her. We'll see if she's as good a chef as she is an actress.
We are still looking for volunteers for other positions. We need a Lighting Assistant, two individuals to run the side projections, and one person to cue the music. We also need all kinds of help to distribute posters. Mike could use a few volunteers to help prepare the house.

The Set
Thanks to Alex Haven, Dawn Storrud, and Roy Hansen, our set is up and mostly complete. There remains a list of some tasks to complete, and the large photographic mural has yet to be hung. But what you see now is a stage more or less as you will see it on the first night of performance. Bravo.

The Artwork and Photography
Posters art is finished and ready to run. It features our signature image for this production, the road outside Laramie where Matthew Shepard was taken that night. Micah Parrish is the photographer. I am exceptionally proud of that shot and this poster. Micah has also shot the photographs we will use for the side projections and the big panorama which will serve as the backdrop for our set. Kudoes to him.

The Music
Nina Kessner has composed music that will play an integral part of the play. It is just incredible, like the lady herself. You have got to hear this to believe it. The play will end with a vocal piece to be performed by Jennie Frankus.

The Community Interface Committee
A community group has been formed in order to provide an educational component to go along with our production. My friend Kayne Pyatt is heading this group of interested citizens and Actors' Mission members. Brad Russell is her co-chair. Educational events will take place after each performance. Kayne will conduct an "open mike" after performances on Thursday and Friday. Chris Kennedy will head and conduct a discussion after Saturday's performance and the Sunday matinee.
Mr. Howard, the head of the Matthew Shepard foundation, will be coming to Rock Springs in connection with our production of The Laramie Project. He will speak at the college on Thursday and will attend several of our performances.

Well, that's all for now. I hope I didn't leave anything or anybody out.

If you want to be a part of this production, feel free to stop by a rehearsal. In general, we rehearse Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays starting at 7 PM.

Much love to all of you. Please get involved, and, of course, come to this play.

Thanks,
Dave Gutierrez ("G")

The Laramie Project Poster Artwork Photograph by Micah Parrish

Laramie Project Update: Photo Excursion to Laramie

Hello Cast,
Hope you are all checking your email regularly as there will be things coming up from this point on. This afternoon, I feel a need to fill you in on the photographic excursion to Laramie we made this weekend.
It was a hectic 24 hours and definitely an ordeal as we hurried around the town trying to get all the shots for the slide projections: churches, the courthouse, downtown, campus and other places relevant to the story of Matthew's death. Thanks to Micah, we have great shots that we will definitely use, and he, in particular, deserves a lot of credit for the quality of the photographs he composed under hurried circumstances. You'll be impressed.For me, it was not just a logistical but an emotional ordeal, one that definitely had its highs and lows. I guess I didn't think about or even anticipate how visiting these places would make me feel.
When we stopped by the bar that was once the Fireside, I really wasn't prepared. I guess physically, visually, the place was a disappointment (we didn't take a single picture of it, not even its dreary face) and it probably bears little resemblance to the bar Matthew visited that night anyway since it has been remodeled and walls have been opened up. What I saw was a characterless and sprawling space, neither cheerful nor glum, no features to speak of, a generic college bar barely animated with a few late afternoon clients. There was no romance in the physical space; this was not a "hangout" or "happening" place to be remembered fondly years later. The pool tables were still there, and the bartender had a bit of Matt Galloway in him, but, otherwise, the place was indifferent to the fateful encounter that took place there ten years ago. We had a drink in the passionless silence for a while. I listened to the sex talk of the group of pathetic young males sitting near us laying the getting laid bullshit on thick and loud enough for me to hear. Old and relentless talk, hurtful, evil, and deadening to the human spirit. Where could such talk lead? I was way down by this time. There was nothing else to do, say, no way to appropriately react, just a horrible, hopeless gloom descending. We left.
Off Happy Jack Road, we found the perfect place to shoot the lights of Laramie. Up a dirt road through treey spaces on an intensely starry night (and after a hilarious encounter with a philosophical and very drunk camper looking for deadwood for a late-start fire --- we'll fill in on this encounter later but with very little imagination we could see definitely see Doc O'Connor in this guy), we came to a spot on the mountain where we could see a little belt of light looking up through a "v" formed by the black trees and sloping mountain . After a hike in the dark with flashlight and tripod in hand, we came to an open area, and there we had it, the twinkling lights of Laramie with a starry spattering above and maybe, we think, a shooting star.
For the "set" shot, I wanted a panorama of what Matthew might have seen that dawn, about 50 degrees of the horizon from his point of view. I knew already that the fence no longer exists, dismantled by the private landowners tired of the endless pilgrims. But I think we were on the very road, and I think we were within a few miles of the spot. One reason is that the road, which comes out of a modern subdivision, is blocked by huge boulders and a few yards further it has been purposefully torn up with earth moving equipment. Why? It seemed a little extreme for a barricade when a simple gate would have worked.
Micah and I hiked up that road as it rose onto a fairly high hill which affords a overlook of the town and an unobstructed view of the range. At first, I thought I wanted a panorama of the view toward Laramie from Matthew's point of view, but we chose the view toward the mountains instead. It was a beautiful sight: billowy clouds, the sweep of prairie grass and woods and the smooth mounds of those embracing mountains. We shot what we could because we were at the last shots on the flashdrive, and it was starting to rain and promising more to come. So we are keeping our fingers crossed that you will see what we saw in the final composite photo.
On the way back, we found the 'signature" shot for the poster, program and all the artwork. The road lifts in the foreground and bows again before the distant mountains above which weeping clouds are swirling. A road is a more powerful symbol than a fence. Fences separate, limit, hold back. Roads lead, destinations unclear and outcomes unknown, but they rise and wind, ending, perhaps, in the clouds.