San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders (photo: Getty Images, via The Advocate)
San Diego’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, is to participate in the San Diego reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later. The piece, commemorating the life and death of gay student Matthew Shepard, will be performed on 12 October at the La Jolla Playhouse.
According to Julie Bolcer, writing at The Advocate:
The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, by the Tectonic Theater Project, explores the long-term impact of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student, on the small town of Laramie, Wyo. This epilogue to the original play The Laramie Project will be read in more than 100 theaters across the country on October 12.
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In San Diego, according to a press release from La Jolla Playhouse, “the reading will be helmed by acclaimed director Darko Tresnjak. In addition to the mayor, the cast includes Doug Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winner and adapter/director of the Playhouse’s upcoming production of Creditors, San Diego Rep Artistic Director Sam Woodhouse, as well as the acclaimed actors Mare Winningham, Robert Foxworth, Amanda Naughton, James Newcomb, Stark Sands, T. Ryder Smith, James Sutorius, among many others.”
Sanders signaled that he had reversed his position on marriage equality during an emotion-laden press conference in 2007. In the process he also revealed that several members of his staff and his daughter are gay. Said the Mayor, “In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships — their very lives — were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Rana.”
San Diegans cheered back in early March, during the city’s Eve of Justice rally, when Mayor Saunders announced the engagement of his daughter, Lisa Sanders, to her partner, Meaghan Yaple.
See the La Jolla Playhouse website for ticket information.
