500 local choral singers unite to perform ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’ at the Mann Center

While Judy Shepard often travels to cities small and large for advocacy work, it is the calmness of her Wyoming home that always pulls her back. It’s to that vast, remote expanse that she often must return in her conversations with high schools, colleges, businesses, and community centers as she tells them the story of her son, Matthew Shepard.

He loved Wyoming’s natural beauty, too. He would go camping with his father and younger brother, hunting and fishing as they sang nursery rhymes like “Frère Jacques.”

And this is where, in 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old college student, was tied to a wooden split-rail fence, tortured, and left to die. Judy and Dennis Shepard had to watch their son struggle for six more days in the hospital before he died from his injuries.

His murder prompted nationwide outrage and a push for legal protections from hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people. Today his parents continue to tell his story, with the hopes of preventing tragedies like theirs, while keeping Matthew’s legacy alive. Earlier this year Judy Shepard was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her tireless work running the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

This week, the Shepards are in Philadelphia with the same mission, introducing themselves to younger generations who may not know Matthew — but who have seen the sharp rise in hate crimes perpetrated against LGBTQ communities in recent years. Part of that effort includes creative productions like Considering Matthew Shepard, a narrative drama told through choral singing accompanied by an instrumental ensemble that arrives at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 10. The work premiered in 2016 and has traveled to more than 230 cities around the world, but this will be the first time it will be performed in Pennsylvania. The choral drama incorporates Matthew’s own diary-like scribblings as well as poetry and various musical genres, aiming not only to recount the tragedy but to provide catharsis as well.

“It’s the hardest piece for me to watch,” said Judy Shepard recently. “The way that they tell the story is just honest, and adding the beautiful music just makes it so much more poignant. I don’t really have the words to explain how powerful it is.”

Shepard met composer-conductor Craig Hella Johnson a decade ago in Austin, where he runs the Grammy-winning choral group Conspirare. Johnson, who is gay, had been thinking about writing an orchestral ode to Matthew for years, so he wanted to connect with the Shepards and request their permission to proceed.

“I’ve always thought of [the Shepards] as royalty in our culture, just in terms of their commitment to erase hate and be about love,” said Johnson. “They turn this grief into something that would really help others. There’s so many people who think of them, culturally, as parents.”

The conversation wasn’t exactly how he envisioned it: they wound up meeting at Austin’s Hula Hut restaurant. “It just was such a funny place to meet them. We were up on those stools and little drinks with umbrellas,” Johnson recalled.

Johnson brought with him a poem by 14th-century Persian writer Hafez called “In Need of the Breath.” The verses made him reflect on the 18 hours that Matthew spent alone and dying, which led him to write a song from the point of view of the fence that held up Matthew. He handed the printed-out poem to Judy.

“I have this vision that brutal damage had been done, but that his spirit was beginning to soar and to confess to the universe, to the stars, because he was going to become the light that his story has become for many people,” Johnson told her. “This poem, I said, is what I envisioned your son’s soul … would have been singing from the fence that night.”

Judy cried before giving him her blessing. “He was so kind and really compassionate and seemed determined to do justice to the story,” she said.

Considering Matthew Shepard is part of the Mann’s Downstage series, which stages works in intimate settings for small audiences.

“What the audience will experience is truly unique,” said Toby Blumenthal, vice president of artistic planning and chief innovation officer at the Mann. “It gives us an opportunity to really feel closer to the art itself.”

There will be a special moment in the finale when the artists will outnumber the audience as a group of roughly 500 choral singers from across the Philadelphia region — including the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus — unite their voices for an emotional ending.

Matthew Shepard’s name is just one in the chorus of countless victims of hate, killed for who they are and who they love. When the chorus unites in Considering, it sings for all of them — past, present, and, sadly, future.

The Mann programmed the choral performance as part of its event series with the theme of acceptance for LGBTQ+ people. Shepard and Johnson hope that their work will heighten awareness not just of Matthew’s story but of the urgent need to address the troubling rise in hate crimes over the past decade, a trend that Shepard attributes to former President Donald Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” toward LGBTQ+ communities.

“His words and the words of his followers, I guess, just sort of opened up the door — the floodgates of prejudice and violence that had been tamped down previously,” she said. “This is not what society should be. We’re here to care for each other and look out for one another, and not tear each other down.”

“Considering Matthew Shepard,” Oct. 10 at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, 5201 Parkside Ave., Phila., Pa. 215-546-7900 or manncenter.org