Documentary Theatre - The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project

In November 1998, Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming and began interviewing citizens about the October 1998 kidnapping and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student who was studying at the University of Wyoming. Kaufman and his company spent over a year traveling back and forth to Laramie and conducting over 200 interviews. These interviews were then fashioned into The Laramie Project. The play is a collection of interviews with the people closest to this traumatic and controversial event. The interviewers in a presentational style later perform it, where the characters talk primarily to the audience. The Laramie Project uses several actors and each actor takes on several roles. The Laramie Project is distinctive because the writers/actors/interviewers became characters in the play. Their thoughts and opinions became part of the script and in the original productions the actors played themselves.