As part of its Black Curtain Theatre series, Whitefish Theatre Company presents “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.”

The show was written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project and is directed by Whitefish Theatre Company’s artistic director, Jesse DeVine. This sensitive and deeply moving production will be performed at 7:30 p.m. May 4 and 5 at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish.

“The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” is an epilogue to the original play “The Laramie Project,” which was created as a reaction to the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.  A decade later, a few members of the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to see if this tragedy had long-term impacts on the community, as well as the nation.

Have people moved on? How have they moved on? Has change come? Are people more tolerant of gay people? Does the ghost of Matthew Shepard somehow linger over the town?

All of these questions are explored with an ensemble of 14 actors playing multiple roles as citizens of Laramie.

“This is an important story and it is told briskly, with moments of humor and with honest reporting that lets the citizens of Laramie speak for themselves — good or bad, right or wrong,” The Denver Examiner says. “This is a rare opportunity to attempt to understand one of the most infamous crimes in recent memory and its impact on our society then and now.”

Adds the San Francisco Gate, this play is “warily hopeful in some ways, worrisome in others, and a bracing look at how we deal with uncomfortable realities.”

“This play certainly draws attention to some of the good changes that have resulted from this tragedy,” DeVine said. “However, the play also very clearly highlights how prejudice remains throughout the nation a decade later and beyond.”

In fact, the show illuminates how sharply attitudes toward the killing have changed in Laramie, with many now viewing Shepard’s murder by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson not as a hate crime, as it was found in court, but as a drug deal gone bad.

“Whitefish Theatre Company was interested in presenting this powerful and graceful work of theater as a means of continuing the conversation about how this past incident impacts our lives today.” DeVine said.

For viewers who saw the Whitefish High School presentation of “The Laramie Project” earlier this year, this will offer an excellent view of the next chapter of this story.

As a Black Curtain production, viewers are reminded that there will be minimal staging, no set or props, and actors will be reading from a script.

Tickets are $10 with general seating and may be purchased at the box office, 1 Central Ave., Whitefish; at www.whitefishtheatreco.org or by calling 862-5371. Box office hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and one hour before performance times.