On Oct. 6, 1998, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student was the innocent victim of a hate crime provoked by gay panic. Six days later, on Oct. 12, 1998, he passed away in the arms of his parents at a local hospital.
The Laramie Project is a play written by Moisés Kaufman and the member of the Tectonic Theatre Project. This play tells the story of this young man and his city. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy read. It is a triggering and devastating story, but I would read it a million times again if it guaranteed that you would.
I don’t intend to give away the sweetest or saddest parts of the story, but I will say that Kaufman, the playwright, was inexplicably drawn to and shocked by the brutality of Matthew Shepard’s murder.
Fortunately, Kaufman was not the only person whose attention was drawn to the crime. Shepard’s death caught attention from across the globe and shone a long overdue light on hate crimes. Why? It was because this story resonated, and America took notice.
So Kaufman and nine member of the Tectonic Theatre Project packed their bags and spent an entire year traveling through Laramie, Wyoming to hear Matthew Shepard’s story. They asked the difficult questions to try to find how the citizens of Laramie, Shepard’s former peers, were thinking and feeling at the end of the millennium.
Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project interviewed more than 200 people.
He called the results a “snapshot of our culture.”
The Laramie Project is not a story with the intent to force an untrue opinion in your head. It is a collection of voices. These are the voices of Laramie. There are voices that mourn Matthew Shepard; there are voices that excuse the murderers’ acts; and there are voices so soft, so passive, so quiet, that you will read them four times over and still not understand its motive.
This play expresses every extreme point of view when it comes to the wars on social justice, civil rights and hate-crime legislation.
This play is 15 years old, and it is still more relevant than I would care to admit.
