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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 student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder is widely considered to be a hate crime motivated by homophobia.[1] The play draws on over 400 interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries and published news reports. The play is divided into three acts and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.
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Performances
The play 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 itself. The Laramie Project has since been performed by a number of schools and colleges, as well as professional players in countries such as the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. The current holder of the royalties/rights to the play is Dramatists Play Service, Inc. Many of the performances in the US have been picketed by representatives of Fred Phelps, who is portrayed in the play owing to his picketing of Matthew Shepard's funeral and the trial of his murderer.
Film
As a result of the play's success, HBO commissioned a 2002 film of The Laramie Project, also written and directed by Kaufman.
Combating homophobia
The play has now begun to be used to teach about prejudice and tolerance in Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship in schools and has also been used in the UK as a General Certificate of Secondary Education text for English literature. The play also inspired grassroots efforts to combat homophobia. One person 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 the largest LGBT library in the state of Wyoming.
References
- ^ Murder charges planned in beating death of gay student. CNN. Retrieved on 2007-11-20.
