The Laramie Project is an amazing theatrical collage that explores
the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of
which we are capable. Don’t miss the opportunity to catch one of
America’s most performed plays, in London for a strictly limited number
of performances.
In October 1998 a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of
Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a
fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His
bloody, bruised and battered body was not discovered until the next
day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was
Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he
was gay. Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic
Theater Project made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year
and a half in the aftermath of the beating and during the trial of the two
young men accused of killing Shepard.
They conducted more than 200 interviews with the people of the town.
Some people interviewed were directly connected to the case, and
others were citizens of Laramie, and the breadth of their reactions to
the crime is fascinating. Kaufman and Tectonic Theater members have
constructed a deeply moving theatrical experience from these
interviews and their own experiences.