Final Chapter of Strawshop's "Biograph" Series to Focus on Gay Martyrs

Matthew Shepard and Alan Turing

Join Galileo, Riefenstahl, Merrick,
and Holiday as Dramatic Sources

Beginning with the 2007 production Life of Galileo, Strawberry Theatre Workshop has endeavored to produce great plays about historical figures who were challenged by the moral and political ambiguities of their time. The series – called Biograph – has sought to make clear the parallels that exist in human struggles across all troubled eras.

For Biograph’s final chapter in 2010, Strawshop will partner two seminal works of late 20th century drama exploring the lives and deaths of two gay martyrs:

The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman (July)
Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore (September)

Produced with some of the city’s most acclaimed professional artists at the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, the pairing is an opportunity to hold a summer-long conversation about conflicting perspectives of partnership, tolerance, and heroism in the heart of the city’s gay community.

The Laramie Project explores the reaction to the murder of Matthew Shepard—a gay student who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. The play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries, and published news reports.

“The images of the bloodied Mr. Shepard, beaten beyond recognition, keep echoing. They become the touchstone by which everything else is measured, an unconditional physical reality that cannot be ignored but can, the play suggests, be transcended.”
Ben Brantley, New York Times (2000)

The subject of Breaking the Code is Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer pioneer whose work as an inventor during World War II helped defeat Nazi Germany. Mr. Turing was convicted of “gross indecency” in 1952 for having a homosexual affair and was forced to endure injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

“When the story of a badgered nonconformist is told as a tale of proud self-assertion rather than maudlin self-pity, one finds not a saintly victim, but a stirring hero, at center stage.”
Frank Rich, New York Times (1987)

The Laramie Project and Breaking the Code are dramatic works that will be revisited for generations, and yet will always appear new for their layered look at individual freedom. To produce these plays now in Seattle, is not simply to celebrate diversity — Seattle does that every day. These plays represent an opportunity to hear and ask questions about ‘what’s next?’ How do we support each other when we don’t fall into our expected roles? What happens when we don’t naturally agree with the majority opinion, or when imperfect men and women make imperfect choices?

Strawshop won The Stranger newspaper’s Genius Award in 2007, and received five nominations in the first-ever TPS Gregory Awards for 2009. More importantly, the public has come to link Strawshop with a movement in Seattle to create jobs for working artists and to reestablish local small business in theatre, which has lost five mid-size professional companies since the turn of the century.

At this time, Strawshop is seeking support from organizations, businesses, and individuals with a history in the Seattle arts community to bring these two plays to Capitol Hill in 2010.

For more information, please go to: strawshop.org