The Laramie Project
is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder is widely considered to be a hate crime motivated by homophobia. [1]
The play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries and published news reports. It is divided into three acts, and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.
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THE LARAMIE PROJECT TICKETS
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Performances
The Laramie Project
premiered at The Ricketson Theatre by the Denver Center Theatre Company (Denver) (part of the
Denver Center for the Performing Arts) in February 2000 and was then performed in the
Union Square Theater in New York City before a November 2002 performance in Laramie, Wyoming. The play has since been performed by a number of schools and colleges, as well as by professional playhouses in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
Many of the performances in the United States have been picketed by representatives of
Fred Phelps, who is portrayed in the play picketing Matthew Shepard's funeral as they did in real life. Though the play has been produced worldwide, it still generates controversy.
The current holder of the royalties/rights to the play is Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Combating homophobia
The Laramie Project
is often used as a method to teach about prejudice and tolerance in
personal, social, and health education and citizenship in schools, and it has also been used in the UK as a
General Certificate of Secondary Education text for English literature.
The play has also inspired grassroots efforts to combat homophobia. After seeing the play, New Jersey resident Dean Walton was inspired to donate more than 500 books and other media to the
University of Wyoming's Rainbow Resource Center. Today, that campus office houses one of the largest
LGBT libraries in the state of
Wyoming.
Film
As a result of the play's success,
HBO commissioned a 2002
film of
The Laramie Project
, also written and directed by Kaufman.
Return to Laramie
Ten years after Shepard's murder, members of the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to conduct follow-up interviews with residents featured in the play. Those interviews were turned into a companion piece, entitled
The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.
The play will debut as a reading at nearly 100 theatres across the US and internationally on October 12, 2009 - the 10th anniversary of
Matthew Shepard's death.
See also
- Violence against LGBT people
- Matthew Shepard Foundation
- Cultural depictions of Matthew Shepard
References
- Murder charges planned in beating death of gay student