Tectonic Theater Project
On 6 October 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. He died 6 days later. His torture and murder became a watershed historical moment in America that highlighted many of the fault lines in our culture.
A month after the murder the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play "The Laramie Project". The piece has been seen by more than 30 million people around the country.
John Sheppard (composer)
Sheppard was probably born around 1515, judging from his statement in 1554 that he had been composing music for twenty years. Nothing certain is known about his early life. The first undoubted sighting of him occurs when he was probably in his later twenties, as "informator choristarum" at Magdalen College, Oxford. He served in this capacity during 1541-2 and again from 1544-8. Sheppard left Magdalen College in March 1548 and next appears in a list of the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal who sang at the funeral of King Edward VI in August 1553; he may have joined the chapel directly after his departure from Magdalen, but, because of a gap in Chapel Royal records from 1547, this is not certain. He presumably remained active at the chapel up to the year of his death. In March 1556 he witnessed the will of a fellow Gentleman of the chapel, Luke Caustell and on New Year's Day 1557 he presented a roll of songs to Mary Tudor. In July 1559 he and his Chapel Royal colleague Richard Edwards were granted the reversion of a lease of a manor in Kent. In 1554 he supplicated, apparently unsuccessfully, for the degree of Doctor of Music at Oxford University, stating that he had studied music for twenty years and had "composed many songs". Sheppard died in December 1558 during an influenza epidemic. He made his will on 1 December and was buried at St Margaret's Church, Westminster on 21 December. Despite this, he was awarded liveries for both the funeral of Queen Mary on 13 December and for the coronation of Elizabeth I on 15 January 1559.