Sunday, June 17, 2007

Welcome!

Hello! Angie and Madeleine here... This is our first full day with the out of state cast members all within the Cannon household! It's a little hectic today because Susan and Kim are throwing us a "meet-the-community"/Father's Day/BIRTHDAY barbeque...so we're sweeping and organizing and cooking and decorating and getting our socializing-faces on. For anyone who isn't familiar with the play or our project this summer here is an explanation of what we are doing and our goals.

Early this year, a group of college students and local actors came together to form No Fog West Theater, a non-profit company based in Sheridan, Wyoming. Our current production is Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project.

In 1998, a University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard, was brutally murdered because he was gay, completely shaking up the community of Laramie and changing the connotations of the word Laramie forever. A theater company from New York City decided to document this reaction by creating a play based on interviews with a wide variety of people from the town. They took several trips to Laramie and conducted over three hundred objective interviews. A collage of direct transcripts from these interviews became The Laramie Project.

By choosing this production for this summer, we wish to inspire an important dialogue among the people of Sheridan and Wyoming as a whole. We believe that The Laramie Project provides a pro-compassion, non-confrontational forum in which to begin such a discussion. Our company while composed of actors from all over the country, remains grounded in and sensitive to Western culture in regards to the sensitive subject matter this play brings up. Our goal is not to impose an acceptance of homosexuality but to show the consequences we all face by not condemning culturally manufactured prejudices. The Laramie Project is not the story of a gay man's death; it is the story of a town's reaction to hate.

Our production will have a seven show run the last two weeks of July at the Carriage House Theater in Sheridan. If you would like more information or would like to make a tax-deductible donation to our non-profit company please email us at nofogwest@gmail.com or send a check to

No Fog West Theater
Grace Cannon, Chair
P.O. Box 401
Big Horn, WY. 82833

and make checks payable to Tandem Productions, our umbrella organization.

LOVE,
Angie and Madeleine and No Fog West

1 comment:

Angiesmom said...

Sounds like an exciting undertaking. You all seem to have many roles in this endeavor -- cast members, fund raisers, director, day workers, producers ... and probably you will also become set designers, costume makers, prop finders, etc. Have a wonderful time. I am looking forward to seeing the play.