TWO PLAYS IN TWO ACTS
ACT I – THE LARAMIE PROJECT
THE STORY: 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. THE LARAMIE PROJECT is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the depths to
which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.
ACT II – THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER
Ten years later on September 12th, 2008, five members of Tectonic returned to Laramie to try to understand the
long-term effect of the murder. They found a town wrestling with its legacy and its place in history. In addition to
revisiting the folks whose words riveted us in the original play, this time around, the company also spoke with the
two murderers, McKinney and Henderson, as well as Matthew’s mother, Judy Shepard. THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN
YEARS LATER is a bold new work, which asks the question, “How does society write its own history?”