The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project was produced to support the first Shanghai Gay Pride. It opened with a bang but was promptly shut down by the foreign police. After some negotiating the show was invited to another venue to perform for an audience by invitation only.

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 gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder was denounced as a hate crime motivated by homophobia and brought attention to the lack of hate crimes laws in various states, including Wyoming.
The play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town; company members' own journal entries and published news reports. It is divided into three acts, and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

It brings together the horror of not only what Mathew experienced, which is completely beyond comprehension but also how it impacted on the town as a whole. The stylistic piece is a true masterpiece bringing to light some of the prejudices that some people in our society still come up against.

< back to Theatre Productions