Hart is a freelance writer and author of several books. In this essay, Hart examines Kaufman's docudrama to discover how the playwright created theatrical drama in a work that is almost nonfiction.

Moisés Kaufman's The Laramie Project is most often referred to as a docudrama, a play that is largely based on real facts. To this point, the play is all but a work of nonfiction. But despite the fact that the basic elements of the play are based on actual events with their own inherent drama, Kaufman's talents as a playwright were used to enhance the emotional impact of the events and thus create an atmosphere that ultimately stirred his audience more than just the reading of the actual events might have caused. The question is then, how did he do this? How did he formulate the play in such a way that he...