Lakewood Playhouse "The Laramie Project"

The Laramie Project is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the complexity of identity and the human experience through the lens and voices of a community in crisis.

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student 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 and the breadth of reaction to the crime is fascinating.