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The Laramie Project

University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard's brutal gay-bashing murder focused national attention as no incident had before on homophobia and related hate crimes. Moises Kaufman's film version of "The Laramie Project" will serve a noble purpose in again confronting a large audience with that issue.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard’s brutal gay-bashing murder focused national attention as no incident had before on homophobia and related hate crimes. Moises Kaufman’s film version of “The Laramie Project” — a stage play he and New York City’s eight-member Tectonic Theater Project derived from hundreds of hours spent interviewing local residents — will serve a noble purpose in again confronting a large audience with that issue. Inevitably powerful due to its subject matter, pic itself reps a decently crafted yet somewhat problematic blurring of the lines between reportage, re-enactment and dramatization. Best suited to the tube, where prevalence of the docudrama form will make its multiple degrees of “reality” seem most palatable, HBO production bows on that net in March.

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Partly developed as both a stage and film entity under Sundance Lab auspices, the work began when successful Off Broadway writer-director Kaufman (of “Gross Indecency,” which not-dissimilarly reshaped transcript from Oscar Wilde’s turn-of-the-the-century trials) and his collaborating actors arrived in Laramie, Wyo., about a month after Shepard’s 1998 death. Stage piece debuted in Denver, then played New York, in 2000.

Two local youths, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were charged with driving Shepard (who’d asked for a ride home) from a local bar to a remote point on the city outskirts. Later claiming that he’d made physical overtures to them, they savagely pistol-whipped and hand-beat the diminutive 21-year-old, then tied him — shoeless and bleeding — to a cattle fence in the mid-October cold. Discovered 18 hours later by a passing bicyclist, Shepard never regained consciousness. After several days in a coma brought on by a head injury, he died.

By then national media attention, candlelight vigils and protests had made the case a cause celebre, one drawing public comment even from President Clinton.

Kaufman and company found locals initially resistant to further attention.Nonetheless, the New Yorkers succeeded in interviewing a wide range of relevant persons, from those who knew Shepard or knew the accused to police, university and hospital personnel and members of the Laramie community. At 95 minutes an hour shorter than its legit incarnation, the filmed “Laramie Project” both benefits and suffers from the translation to location-shot, realistic re-creation. Kaufman, adapting the group-assembled text for his first screen effort, wisely minimizes the actors’ commenting about their feelings. While playing reporter was no doubt a difficult, even life-changing experience, those aspects were occasionally aired to a self-indulgent degree onstage.

Details of the murder and events leading to it are also dwelt on more tersely; there’s no re-enactment per se of the night itself, lending greater focus to a shocked community’s reaction — as well as that community’s all-American, all-over-the-map character mix.

On the other hand, “The Laramie Project’s” simplicity as theater — the actors played themselves and various interviewees on a bare stage — provided at least one degree less separation than the screen version does.

Here, actual news footage is intercut with actors playing media personnel. Variably well known actors play unknown ones interviewing actors playing real Laramie residents. Most notable among the latter include Peter Fonda as chief physician at the hospital; Amy Madigan as the police officer who first arrived at the scene and for a time feared HIV blood infection; an atypically hoarse-voiced Janeane Garofalo as the university’s first “out” gay instructor; Jeremy Davies as a drama student; Steve Buscemi as a taxi driver who’d befriended the victim; Christina Ricci as a close peer friend; and Mark Webber as the convicted murderer McKinney.

There are few false performance moments here, and a number of impressive ones, from Laura Linney’s monologue as a politely homophobic housewife to Terry Kinney as Dennis Shepard, the grieving father whose agonizing courtroom speech — which may have spared Aaron McKinney the death penalty — provides pic its emotional climax.

Yet the artifice inherent in recasting this story via so many familiar professional faces does lend this “Laramie Project” a hybrid, pseudo-real quality that’s often distracting. One need only remember two films drawn from a similar Heartland gay hate-crime case — docu “The Brandon Teena Story” and its widely seen loose dramatization “Boys Don’t Cry” — to see how a simpler approach, in either direction, could ultimately serve a true story better than this elaborate quasi-documentary construct does.

That said, the heart-wrenching nature of the material does eventually come through, gracefully making points about tolerance, the communities we live in and their ability to change. Brian A. Kates’ excellent editing maintains a strong sense of narrative momentum through the script’s potentially tricky structure.

Occasional overuse of split-screen effects to convey multiple p.o.v.s reps most notable visual tactic in an otherwise straightforward, workmanlike presentation. Peter Golub contributes a score that’s nearly omnipresent in its sweetened Philip Glass-style repeat of orchestral motifs.

Production: An HBO Films presentation of a Good Machine production in association with Cane/Gabay Prods. Produced by Declan Baldwin. Executive producers, Ross Katz, Anne Carey, Ted Hope. Co-executive producers, Peter Cane, Roy Gabay. Directed by Moises Kaufman. Screenplay, Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project -- Leigh Fondakowski, Jeffrey LaHoste, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti, Stephen Wangh, Amanda Gronich, John McAdams, Andy Paris, Barbara Pitts, Kelli Simpkins --based on the play by Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project.
Crew: Camera (Deluxe color), Terry Stacey; editor, Brian A. Kates; music, Peter Golub; music supervisor, Alex Steyermark; production designer, Dan Leigh; art director, Tim Duffy; set decorator, Paul Sjoberg; costume designer, Katie Saunders; sound (Dolby Digital), Robert Abbott; supervising sound editor, Andy Kris; assistant director, Chip Signore; second unit camera, Kip Bogdahn; casting, Ann Goulder. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (opening night), Salt Lake City, Jan. 10, 2002. Running time: 95 MIN.
With: With: Dylan Baker, Stephen Belber, Tom Bower, Clancy Brown, Steve Buscemi, Nestor Carbonell, Kathleen Chalfant, Jeremy Davies, Clea Duvall, Michael Emerson, Noah Fleiss, Peter Fonda, Ben Foster, Janeane Garofalo, Amanda Gronich, Mercedes Herrero, Bill Irwin, Joshua Jackson, Terry Kinney, Laura Linney, Amy Madigan, Camryn Manheim, Margo Martindale, John McAdams, James Murtaugh, Andy Paris, Summer Phoenix, Greg Pierotti, Barbara Pitts, Christina Ricci, Richard Riehle, Kelli Simpkins, Lois Smith, Frances Sternhagen, Mark Webber.

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THEATER REVIEW

THEATER REVIEW; A Brutal Act Alters a Town

By Ben Brantley

May 19, 2000

The vision that changes lives in Laramie, Wyo., on an October morning in 1998 is anything but celestial.

The first person to experience it, a young man on a bicycle, finds it impossible to believe that what he is looking at is human, initially thinking he has come upon a Halloween effigy, a grotesquely rigged-up scarecrow.

The second to arrive, a sheriff's deputy, cannot make out the face on the still-breathing body: only two tracks of skin are revealed through the crusted blood. They must have been formed, she speculates with an anguished wonder, by the paths of tears.

Thus is a 21-year-old man named Matthew Shepard described in the extraordinary final moments of the first act of ''The Laramie Project,'' the enormously good-willed, very earnest and often deeply moving work of theatrical journalism that opened last night at the Union Square Theater.

These two accounts, taken from transcripts of interviews with citizens of Laramie by the members of the Tectonic Theater Project, are delivered in counterpoint with a third, that of an emergency room doctor who says his mind at first refused to grasp the idea that what was done to Mr. Shepard was wrought by the hands of other men. The note again resonates, a knell that trembles with troubling persistence: what has happened is beyond humanity, at least as any of these three figures has known it.

''The Laramie Project,'' which has been overseen by the director and writer Moises Kaufman, the inspired talent behind ''Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,'' is virtuously determined to reclaim that missing human factor, to find the light in an event of harrowing darkness. Mr. Shepard, as much of the world now knows, was an openly gay university student who was beaten, tied to a fence on the outskirts of town and left to die by two men roughly his age. In death, he has become a poster boy for the casualties of anti-gay violence.

Throughout ''The Laramie Project'' -- which has largely been shaped from interviews conducted during six visits to Laramie by Mr. Kaufman and his ensemble of actors and writers following the crime -- the images of the bloodied Mr. Shepard, beaten beyond recognition, keep echoing. They become the touchstone by which everything else is measured, an unconditional physical reality that cannot be ignored but can, the play suggests, be transcended.

Reams have already been written on the murder of Matthew Shepard and on the trials of his killers, Russell A. Henderson and Aaron J. McKinney. Those three men remain mostly abstractions here. Whereas ''Gross Indecency,'' the Tectonic group's best-known earlier project, was built around the vivid onstage presence of Wilde, the central players in the tragedy of ''Laramie'' are essentially presented as what they have come to stand for.

What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple formality of its staging, in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against Robert Brill's bare-bones set, ''Laramie'' often brings to mind ''Our Town,'' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire.

To some degree, Laramie is indeed presented as a latter-day Grover's Corners, a cozy place where everyone appears to know everyone else's business and actually finds comfort in this. But if ''The Laramie Project'' nods conspicuously to Wilder, this play is ''Our Town'' with a question mark, as in ''Could this be our town?'' There are repeated variations by the citizens of Laramie on the statement ''It can't happen here,'' followed immediately by ''And yet it has.''

A young ''Muslim feminist'' student who grew up in Laramie describes this dizzying contrast of idealized perception and deflating reality as something like the confusions induced by the mazes in an Escher print. The observation and the observer are unusually exotic for this play.

The production's characters, winnowed down from roughly 200 people interviewed, generally fit a more familiar mold of the small-town American Westerner: friendly, plain-spoken, guarded and understandably suspicious of the troupe from New York that has arrived to probe, a self-consciousness that has been incorporated into ''The Laramie Project.''

They needn't have worried. Even the evening's less sympathetic characters, including the Kansas preacher who showed up at Mr. Shepard's funeral as an anti-gay protester, are served up with respectful caution. Most of the others are wrapped in a warm cloak of affection.

The production's translation of transcribed interviews and documents may directly recall the methods of the performance artist Anna Deavere Smith, especially in her study of racial conflict in Brooklyn, ''Fires in the Mirror.'' But ''Laramie'' -- which gives credit to a team of a dozen writers and dramaturgs led by Mr. Kaufman and Leigh Fondakowski -- feels less clinical than Ms. Smith's works in presenting its subjects, and the lack of distance is not always an asset.

A Roman Catholic priest who arranged the first of the candlelight vigils held for of Mr. Shepard more than once speaks of the importance of a ''correct'' representation of Laramie. That injunction has been thoroughly honored. Though the cast is more than capable in its creation of an affecting emotional climate, only a few of its members have anything like Ms. Smith's ear for revelatory speech patterns and are able to summon portraits that feel correspondingly authentic.

There is an overriding sense that the characters -- who range from ranchers to university professors, from a lesbian waitress to a Baptist minister -- are cut from the same cloth of perplexed decency, embellished with the occasional signpost of an eccentricity, like the woman who remembers when her Laramie home was isolated enough for her to do her housework in ''my altogethers.''

There are a few recurring figures who acquire the specificity of fingerprints: one thinks especially of the bicyclist who found Mr. Shepard, embodied with eloquent inarticulateness by Kelli Simpkins, and the deputy sheriff, vibrantly played by Mercedes Herrero, who is exposed to H.I.V. while assisting the wounded Mr. Shepard. By and large, however, these people are defined principally by their responses to an unspeakable event. You aren't allowed to know them, as you are, say, the characters in ''Boys Don't Cry,'' a movie that covers similar material.

Yet, while running two and a half hours with two intermissions, ''The Laramie Project'' sustains its emotional hold. As Mr. Kaufman demonstrated with ''Gross Indecency,'' he has a remarkable gift for giving a compelling theatrical flow to journalistic and historical material. And here he again finds the implicit music in repeated phrases and themes.

More than anything, those echoes conjure the feelings of horrified astonishment that certain acts of brutality can still elicit. Actually, the evening itself has the feeling of those candlelight vigils. There is that same sense of a stately procession through which swims a stirring medley of emotions: anger, sorrow, bewilderment and, most poignantly, a defiant glimmer of hope.

THE LARAMIE PROJECT

By Moises Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project. Directed by Mr. Kaufman; head writer and assistant director, Leigh Fondakowski; associate writers, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti and Stephen Wangh; dramaturgs, Amanda Gronich, Sarah Lambert, John McAdams, Maude Mitchell, Andy Paris, Barbara Pitts and Kelli Simpkins. Sets by Robert Brill; costumes by Moe Schell; lighting by Betsy Adams; composer, Peter Golub; video and slide design, Martha Swetzoff; production manager, Kai Brothers; production stage manager, Charles Means; project adviser, Mr. Wangh. Associate producers, Mara Isaacs and Hart Sharp Entertainment. Presented by Roy Gabay, Tectonic Theater Project, in association with Gayle Francis and the Araca Group. At the Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Stephen Belber (Himself, Doc O'Connor, Matt Galloway and Andrew Gomez), Amanda Gronich (Herself, Trish Steger, Marge Murray and Baptist Minister), Mercedes Herrero (Reggie Fluty and Rebecca Hilliker), John McAdams (Moises Kaufman, Stephen Mead Johnson, Jon Peacock and Harry Woods), Andy Paris (Himself, Jedediah Schultz, Matt Mickelson and Doug Laws), Greg Pierotti (Himself, Sergeant Hing, Rob DeBree, Father Roger and Rulon Stacey), Barbara Pitts (Herself, Catherine Connolly, Zubaida Ula and Lucy Thompson) and Kelli Simpkins (Leigh Fondakowski, Romaine Patterson, Aaron Kreifels and Zackie Salmon).

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'Ten Years Later,' The Matthew Shepard Story Retold

Elizabeth Blair

The Laramie Project , about Matthew Shepard and how his murder affected both his Wyoming town and the national discourse on hate crimes, has been produced by theaters large and small. Here, cast members John McAdams (from left), Barbara Pitts, Greg Pierotti and Mercedes Herrero perform in the 2001 West Coast premiere production of The Laramie Project at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Ken Friedman/Tectonic Theater Project hide caption

The Laramie Project — one of the most-performed plays of the last decade — is based on the true story of Matthew Shepard, the young man who, in October 1998, was savagely beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo. Almost instantly, Shepard's name became a kind of grim rallying cry for those drawing attention to hate crimes committed against gays.

Now there's an epilogue to The Laramie Project, and tonight more than a hundred theaters around the country will perform readings of the new play. Together with the first one, it constitutes a powerful version of Matthew Shepard's story.

But it's not the only version — and that's a big part of why the epilogue exists.

Listening To Stories, And Hearing Multitudes Within

Playwright Moises Kaufman, who led the team of theater-collective collaborators who created The Laramie Project, is fascinated by stories — how we tell them, how we respond to them, how we use them.

Moises Kaufman, founder of the Tectonic Theater Project, wanted to write an epilogue to The Laramie Project in part because of continued debate over whether Shepard was killed because he was gay, or for some other reason. Ken Friedman/Tectonic Theater Project hide caption

"We tend to think of story, and history specifically, as one thing," says Kaufman. "But the most exciting narratives are the ones that combine many different points of view, and many different people who tell it."

To tell Matthew Shepard's story, Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theater Project relied on more than 200 interviews that they conducted in Laramie shortly after Shepard's murder.

The result was the play (later made into an HBO feature film) called The Laramie Project; it blends performances of many of those interviews with a re-enactment of parts of the trials of Shepard's killers.

Among the people that the Tectonic corps interviewed were investigators, ranchers, clergymen and Shepard's friends. They talked to the bartender at the Fireside Lounge, where Shepard and his killers were seen the night he was beaten; one of Shepard's teachers at the University of Wyoming; the policewoman who was called to the crime scene where Shepard, brutally beaten, lay on the ground tied to a fence; the lead investigator on the case; and a professor who followed the trials of Shepard's killers. "When they used gay panic as a defense ," she told Tectonic Theater, "I said 'This is good.' Because if nothing else, the truth is going to come out."

For Shepard's mother, The Laramie Project has not only kept her son's story alive, it has educated "the participants as well as the audience about what bigotry lies within us all," Judy Shepard says. "In every community, not just Laramie."

A Story Retold — And The Retelling Rebutted

Video: From 'The Laramie Project'

'The Trial Of Aaron McKinney'

Media no longer available

Matthew Shepard's savage killing was used to strengthen the argument for hate-crimes legislation. But meanwhile, another version of his story was gathering steam.

Six years after the crime, the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 set out to debunk the idea that Shepard was murdered because he was gay. Like The Laramie Project, the one-hour episode included interviews with Shepard's friends, as well as investigators assigned to the case. ABC's Elizabeth Vargas interviewed Shepard's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russ Henderson, both serving life sentences.

Shepard, 20/20 reported, may have used methamphetamine. The report said that McKinney had been a dealer. "Meth is what made the world go around in Laramie," a friend of McKinney's and a former dealer told Vargas.

Audio Extra

Moises kaufman on how the 'laramie project' research trips were funded.

20/20 also reported that McKinney and Henderson had been on a meth binge in the days before meeting Shepard. And prosecutor Cal Rerucha told 20/20 that "the methamphetamine just fueled this point where there was no control. So, it was a horrible, horrible, horrible murder. But it was a murder that was driven by drugs."

Playwright Moises Kaufman believes the 20/20 story was "terrible journalism" that "changed the nature of the dialogue." So one of his goals with the new Laramie Project epilogue was to debunk the 20/20 story.

Kaufman and his Tectonic colleagues went back to Laramie last year, re-interviewing many of the people they'd met a decade ago — as well as talking to some new sources.

Actors gathered at the University of Maryland on Sept. 20 to rehearse for a staged reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later . More than 100 theaters in the U.S. — and around the world — will stage the epilogue on Oct. 12, the anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death. Gene Carl Feldman hide caption

"One of the things we do in the play," says Kaufman, "is we go back and ask investigators ... and we go back over trial transcripts, and we prove that it was a hate crime."

The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later includes the comments of Rob Debree from the Albany County Sheriff's Office in Laramie.

"We've proven that there were no drugs on board with McKinney and Henderson — just none," Debree declares. And what about the claim that Shepard's murder was a robbery and drug deal gone bad? "That's some kind of massive denial," one openly gay Laramie resident tells Tectonic Theater.

Laramie police commander Dave O'Malley, who also appears in the 20/20 episode, says: "It angered me more than anything the things [ABC] didn't say — the things they left out."

In The Middle, Room For A Blend Of Both Explanations

There is yet a third way to look at the Matthew Shepard story.

Journalist JoAnn Wypijewski wrote an extensive article (read an excerpt) for Harper's magazine in 1999. She thinks the truth lies where the two versions overlap.

"Of course it had to do with homophobia. Of course it had to do with drugs. Of course it had to do with violence in the culture," Wypijewski says.

She says she has problems with The Laramie Project and with the 20/20 report. Both offer too narrow an explanation for why Shepard was killed, she contends.

"If you say 'It's just about hate,' or 'It's just about drugs,' you so simplify the story," Wypijewski says. "It's not either-or."

Wypijewski thinks the oversimplifications began as soon as Matthew Shepard was held up as an emblem for hate crimes.

"Emblematic stories need emblematic victims," maintains Wypijewski. "So Matthew needed to be an emblematic victim. And as soon as you have to do that, you start creating a kind of myth."

Kaufman knows very well that which story you tell — and which story you choose to believe — depend a lot on your own agenda.

"Stories are malleable," he says. "History is malleable. And so we have to be doubly vigilant when we listen to history and we listen to stories."

On Oct. 12, 2009 — 11 years to the day after Matthew Shepard's death — his story will be told again by Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Company, in more than a hundred theaters around the country.

Excerpt: 'A Boy's Life'

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The Laramie Project Reviews

The Laramie Project is not really about Matthew Shepard but about this question of identification with Matthew, and of identification with the larger community of Laramie that admitted, sustained, eliminated, grieved, and civilly avenged Matthew.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 5, 2012

A fascinating chorus of outrage and sadness, hatred and hope.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 24, 2007

Though well-intentioned, dealing with the relevant issues of hate crimes and gay bashing, artisticaly speaking, Moises Kaufman's film, the opening night of 2001 Sundance Fest, is quite disappointing.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Nov 15, 2006

a potent, thought-provoking drama that offers insight not only into Shepard's case, but into the changing attitudes of Americans in general.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

questions our basic humanity, and gives an accurate picture of the current state of affairs of tolerance in America's schizoid version of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 27, 2003

It's a compelling and horrifying story, and The Laramie Project is worthwhile for reminding us that this sort of thing does, in fact, still happen in America.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 8, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 18, 2002

Kaufman creates an eerie sense of not only being there at the time of these events but the very night Matthew was killed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 5, 2002

The bottom line is the piece works brilliantly.

Full Review | Apr 8, 2002

Utter mush... conceited pap.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Mar 9, 2002

The film does give a pretty good overall picture of the situation in Laramie following the murder of Matthew Shepard.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 9, 2002

... a workmanlike film and important in that it will reach a large audience with a story that needs to be told.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2002

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The laramie project.

2002 Directed by Moisés Kaufman

Everyone carries a piece of the truth.

"The Laramie Project" is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of "The Laramie Project," the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town's citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe's visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself.

Dylan Baker Tom Bower Clancy Brown Steve Buscemi Jeremy Davies Clea DuVall Peter Fonda Janeane Garofalo Bill Irwin Joshua Jackson Terry Kinney Laura Linney Amy Madigan Camryn Manheim Christina Ricci Lois Smith Frances Sternhagen Mark Webber Kathleen Chalfant Nestor Carbonell Andy Paris Grant Varjas Kelli Simpkins Billie McBride Bill Christ Regina Krueger Michael Emerson Margo Martindale Greg Pierotti Show All… John McAdams Michael K. Osborn Anne Cloud Ben Foster Leslie Henson Garrett Neergaard Daniel Ahearn Steef Sealy Summer Phoenix Noah Fleiss James Murtaugh Richard Riehle Amanda Gronich Mercedes Herrero Stephen Belber Barbara Pitts

Director Director

Moisés Kaufman

Producer Producer

Declan Baldwin

Writers Writers

Moisés Kaufman Stephen Wangh

Casting Casting

Ann Goulder

Editor Editor

Brian A. Kates

Cinematography Cinematography

Terry Stacey

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Ross Katz Ted Hope Anne Carey Roy Gabay Peter Du Cane

Production Design Production Design

Art direction art direction, set decoration set decoration.

Paul Sjoberg

Composer Composer

Peter Golub

Costume Design Costume Design

Katie Saunders

Makeup Makeup

Claus Lulla Laura Van Wagner

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Rosanne Reid Laura Lee R. Frye

HBO Cane/Gabay Productions Good Machine

Releases by Date

10 jan 2002, 23 feb 2002, releases by country.

95 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Stephen Earnest ★★ 1

Of course it goes without saying that Matthew Shepard’s death was tragic, because any death – whether the cause be murder or old age – rightfully is, but Good Lord God Almighty was it deserving of a better film – or, perhaps, no film at all. Maybe The Laramie Project should have just stuck to the stage.

What Moisés Kaufman and crew have done here is given themselves a big, smug, self-congratulatory pat on the back. Unlike the stage play, this version of The Laramie Project isn’t simply an account of the reactions in Laramie to Shepard’s death, but rather a re-enactment of Kaufman and crew’s reactions to the reactions in Laramie, which is as strange as it sounds. It…

Review by ella ★ 1

me, full on weeping watching a film about homophobic hate crimes in a class full of vocal trump supporters. braver than any US marine

Review by claire ! ★★★½ 4

my theatre prof be like here write a piece of verbatim theatre and as an example im gonna show you all a horrible homophobic hate crime movie to a class of mostly queer people, okay 😜✌🏻

Review by Jiheun Han ★★½

I don't know. When you're making a film about a hate crime, maybe don't make it about yourself.

Review by Sarah ★★★

"I shouldn't have let him say that to me."

Matthew Shepard's death still acts as a shadow over Laramie. On my first day of graduate assistant teaching, I noticed a bench dedicated to him. It was filled to the brim with objects and letters. One of the letters noted queer progress, his role in it, and his hopeful place in heaven. It was beautifully written and filled with bright-eyed lens of diversity here. However, much like the ending of this film, I am wary of buying into midwest, moderate slogans like "Hate Has No Home Here". In reality, hate hides in the attic. It is the unseen child of a dirty house, waiting to come into the light at the…

Review by Owen ★★

Read the stage play instead. This isn’t worth your time.

Review by soph

while this film was horribly executed, the story is so genuinely heartbreaking that i ended up sitting in the middle of my literature class bawling my eyes out

Review by bigotlow ★★★★★ 1

This really surprised me. I never realized how beautiful this is after doing it for our show a few years back.

It makes you think so much, I was constantly having an inner monologue.

It also opened conversations with my parents and how it was perceived around that time.

Saw it on the playbill email of 25yrs so I decided to watch, greatest decision I’ve ever made.

Review by ZacharyBinx ★★★★

It's flaws are obvious. It's heavy handed and at times overly earnest to the point of feeling inauthentic. It's an epic cast, but sometimes distracting for that very reason. However, the Matthew Shepard case was so monumentally important in our nation's history and so gruesome and abhorrent a crime that it destroyed a largely part of humanity. That loss breeds hopelessness and fear and loathing. Thankfully, it also spurred a lot of action, both in Laramie through the local support that was formed, but also nationwide. Through our justice and political systems, and, luckily, through our hearts. So many equality laws now have some origin in this case. One man dies tragically and he wakes up the world. Time and…

Review by Cinema_Snobb ★★★★

An unusual but compelling account that showcases actual interviews with the townsfolk of Laramie, Wyoming following the tragic murder of 21 year old college student Matthew Shepard.

Those interviews were made into the acclaimed play.

It's a jarring and horrifying picture.

Review by Hank Bauer ★★★½

“That is not Laramie!”

The very touching story of Matthew Shepard’s murder, and the bittersweet reaction of a town that’s forced to think about it’s social views. The interview aspect of this is great, very interesting way to do a biopic (or play), just interviewing the people who knew the victim and go from there. The town as a character aspect is interesting; in a film like The Blob you have a shared dread and responsibility between characters. Here, you get people outing themselves as gay to talk about how Shepard’s story changed their lives, contrasted with white “All Lives Matter” moms who think that cops dying on duty should get more recognition in the paper than Shepard.

The only time…

Review by rylan_reviews ★★★

*Amazing cast signs onto a mediocre script*

Michael Emerson: ITS THE RULES!!!

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The Laramie Project Reviews

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Dylan Baker, Steve Buscemi, Laura Linney and Peter Fonda are part of a remarkable ensemble cast in this drama about the residents of Laramie, Wyo., in the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student. Janeane Garofalo, Terry Kinney, Amy Madigan, Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci, Frances Sternhagen, Joshua Jackson.

Reviewed By: Brian J. Dillard

Innovative, mournful, and politically charged, this piece of journalistic theater translates powerfully to the screen. Helmed by its original stage director, cinematic newcomer Moises Kaufman, The Laramie Project manages not only to sidestep the obvious emotions milked by TV movies about the Matthew Shepard case, but also to reject all of their hackneyed techniques. Compiled by the Tectonic Theater Project from hundreds of hours of interviews with the residents of Laramie, WY, where Shepard was murdered, the film is more of a sociological interrogation than a dramatic story. Fragmentary and spare, the material benefits enormously from Kaufman's precise pacing, judicious use of split screens and wide-open exteriors, and sensitive direction of a motley Hollywood cast. Christina Ricci has one of the punchiest roles as Romaine Patterson, Shepard's fiery lesbian best friend, but even Laura Linney, in just one extended scene and a few snippets, manages to nail one particular outlook and set of responses, contributing to the mosaic of individual thoughts and emotions that make up the piece. Performers as diverse as '60s survivor Peter Fonda and Dawson's Creek teenybopper Joshua Jackson exhibit the same careful attention to craft. Amy Madigan deserves special mention for her grave cop role, which scans like Frances McDormand's part in Fargo drained of its humor and Minnesota kitsch. One of the few moments that rankles is the inclusion of actual news reports from the time of the murder; there's enough leftie celebrity glitz involved in the casting without seeing the real-life Ellen DeGeneres in footage of a vigil. Such minor quibbles aside, this is the most powerful film produced about the Shepard murder -- a stunning achievement considering the young man himself never appears.

Review: ‘The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later’ a haunting feat

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History forgotten is history repeated, which underscores “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” in its Los Angeles premiere at the Gay & Lesbian Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre.

This potent follow-up to the landmark Tectonic Theater Project docudrama about community reactions to Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder reminds anew of how theater provides context in ways no other form can match.

In 2008, Tectonic director Moisés Kaufman and colleagues Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber returned to Laramie, Wyo., to explore what progress, or lack thereof, had been made in a decade. Their interviews with previous subjects and new ones comprise the narrative, which again deploys reportage and once-removed characterizations without editorializing.

Leave that to the audience, since director Ken Sawyer’s inspired staging wraps us around the action, up close and personal, enfolded in designer Robert Selander’s set. This immersive approach, aided by Luke Moyer’s ambient lighting, lands the property’s overview in our laps.

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The ensemble, accompanied by singer Johanna Chase, is beyond praise. Ed F. Martin, Ann Noble, Paul Witten, Paul Haitkin and Carl J. Johnson play the Tectonic crew and various interviewees along with Elizabeth Herron, Che Landon and Christine Sloane, all interrelating with preternatural versatility and control. And in a directorial masterstroke, Michael Hanson and Dylan Seaton alternate nightly as killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, evoking a chilling duality.

Yes, the final addendum on gay military and marriage equality advances feels slightly abrupt, but it’s thematically apt. The recent public heckling at an Old Miss “Laramie” performance and the homophobic backlash on both hemispheres demonstrate the ongoing validity of Tectonic’s objective.

At present, this riveting sequel is perhaps only rivaled by “The Normal Heart” at the Fountain for cumulatively moving, issue-driven power. It’s a haunting achievement as trenchant as it is artful, and not to be missed.

“The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later,” Davidson/Valentini Theatre at the Gay & Lesbian Center’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. No performance Oct. 20. Ends Nov. 16. $25-$20. (323) 860-7300 or www.lagaycenter.org/theatre . Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

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Theater | “The Laramie Project,” now at the Arvada…

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Theater | “the laramie project,” now at the arvada center, continues to offer fresh lessons | review, on oct. 12, it will have been 25 years to the day that matthew shepard died at fort collins’ poudre valley hospital.

The cast of the Arvada Center production of “The Laramie Project.” Amanda Tipton Photography, provided by the Arvada Center

Late in a recent matinee of “The Laramie Project,” the steady tears of a woman in a nearby row turned to sobbing. It wasn’t a distraction so much as a confirmation that the tragedy that led playwright Moisés Kaufman and a team of fellow theater makers from his company, Tectonic Theater Project, to descend upon Laramie, Wyo., with compassionate and questioning hearts remains rending. And given the uptick in violence directed at people who identify as LGBTQ+, its lessons remain timely.

On Oct. 12, it will have been 25 years to the day that Matthew Shepard died at Fort Collins’ Poudre Valley Hospital, where he was taken after being robbed, severely beaten and left tied to a wood-railing fence outside Laramie. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the assailants who posed as gay to gain Shepard’s trust, are serving consecutive life sentences for his murder.

In a fine departure from its often satisfying but cautious programming, the Arvada Center — under artistic director Lynne Collins — is staging the docudrama with the polish its productions so often have. The ensemble is aided by the mindful direction of Kate Gleason and Rodney Lizcano, themselves talented actors. The play received its world premiere in 2000 at the Denver Center.

In a welcome gesture of transparency, the play begins with Kaufman (played by Lizcano) telling the audience what went into its making. “On November 14, 1998, the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, and conducted interviews with the people of the town,” he begins. Over the next year, the theater-makers would return to Laramie several times. All told, they conducted over 200 interviews with townsfolk.

Material from those interviews, excerpts from the company members’ journals and other news and archival sources comprise a work that feels truthful even though its flow is the work of craftsmanship. In this way, the play can’t and shouldn’t take the place of journalism. Though at times the approach bests journalism in grappling with the questions “Why?” and “How?,” it insists that we keep asking questions of events, of our understanding of them (then and now), and of ourselves.

The cast numbers eight; the characters they inhabit, more than 60. Among them: a university theater professor; a sheriff; the young cyclist who discovered Shepard barely breathing (initially, he thought it was a scarecrow); the policewoman who answered that cyclist’s 911 call; the Fireside Lounge owner and bartender; a waitress; University of Wyoming chancellor; hospital CEO and spokesperson for the Shepard family; Dennis Shepard (father of Matthew); a variety of ministers; and the killers. The playwrighting team members are also represented.

With so many characters, some will connect in different ways for each audience member. Take actor Christopher Hudson’s embodiment of theater geek Jedadiah Schultz, whose parents, he shares, saw every show he’d ever been in until he took a role in Tony Kushner’s AIDS masterwork, “Angels in America.” Hudson also portrays bartender Matt Galloway, who was serving up drinks the night Shepard left with McKinney and Henderson. They are two young men, differently confident, differently humbled by the enormity of the event.

The play is rife with demands that stretch and call for subtlety from its performers. The actors have brought their best to those challenges. Warren Sherrill is boisterous as Doc O’Connor, a limousine driver, then solemn as the family spokesperson and hospital CEO. Suzanne Jada Dixon leans amusingly into theater professor Rebecca Hilliker, and then kicks back, laughing as her character Alison Mears and Marge Murray (a very fine Anne Oberbroeckling) talked with Tectonic member Greg Pierotti (Torsten Hillhouse). Or, as he says of them, “two social service workers who taught me a thing or two.”

Susannah McLeod’s portrayal of Reggie Fluty, the police officer who arrived at that field, is touching, for her description of that encounter with Shephard but also later when she fears she might have contracted HIV. And Chrys Duran’s portrayal of Zubaida Ula, a Muslim woman who grew up in Laramie, serves as a gentle rejoinder to the too-easy notion of “good town/good people.”

Warren Sherrill as Rulon Stacey, head of the Poudre Valley Hospital and Shepard family spokesperson.Image by Amanda Tipton Photography, provided by the Arvada Center

Moments make up “The Laramie Project,” yet it doesn’t feel fractured. Staged sparingly with wooden risers and a backdrop of rectangular screens in various sizes (scenic design by Tina Anderson), the play feels operatic. All the players are often on the stage, a Greek chorus befitting tragedy, and the lighting design (Jon Olson) and sound (original music and sound by Max Silverman) guide our attention. The production’s use of projections (by Garrett Thompson) is evocative of place — the university, the bar where Matthew met his killers, the city — but never busy. Images of wide grassland prairie are beckoning, contemplative even before turning sorrowful.

The gift of “The Laramie Project” is to give voice to the citizens of a town reeling, reckoning but also feeling tarnished by a violent and bigoted act, and the influx of journalists probing what kind of place nurtured it.

All the onstage reckoning, defensiveness and grappling toward understanding what happened and why doesn’t change the fact that Shepard died. But the power of theater does provide a sanctuary of consideration. To that end, on Oct. 28 and 29, Matthew’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, will be at the Arvada Center for two talkbacks, beginning at 5 p.m. The events are free, but registration is requested.

“The Laramie Project”: Written by Moisés Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project, specifically Leigh Fondakowski, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti and Stephen Wangh. Directed by Kate Gleason and Rodney Lizcano. Featuring Jada Suzanne Dixon, Chrys Duran, Torsten Hillhouse, Christopher Hudson, Lizcano, Susannah McLeod, Anne Oberbroeckling and Warren Sherrill. At the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada, through Nov. 5. For tickets and info: arvadacenter.org or 720-898-7200

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The Laramie Project, Denver. 2000 Photo by Terry Shapiro

How ‘The Laramie Project’ changed theatre – and the world

Video footage from the world-premiere staging of ‘The Laramie Project’ at the Denver Center in February 2000.

The groundbreaking, Denver-born play’s legacy, 20 years later: Art matters

There are many tangible ways to measure how The Laramie Project has changed theatre and the world since New York’s Tectonic Theater Project opened the groundbreaking play in Denver 20 years ago today in partnership with the Denver Center Theatre Company .

Most evidently, by the estimated 10 million who have seen the play performed on stages in at least 20 countries and 13 languages. By the 20 million who have watched the HBO film adaptation. By the 2009 enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act .

Head Writer and Assistant Director Leigh Fondakowski measures the play’s impact by a single performance she attended in Washington D.C., when a teenager came out as gay during the talkback.

“The audience applauded him,” Fondakowski said. “His life changed forever, and for the better, in that moment. Our play created a space for that.”

The Laramie Project , drawn from 200 interviews conducted by Artistic Director Moisés Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project in the year following Shepard’s murder, is now routinely studied in schools as a method for teaching prejudice and tolerance. The brutal murder, and Tectonic’s efforts to understand both its underlying origin, and the community’s attempt to heal, have led to a profound reckoning of American values. What happened in Laramie, Kaufman said, “was a watershed moment for the country.”

Perhaps the greatest measure of this story is the journey taken by Shepard himself since Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson left him so beaten and bloodied that the first passers-by mistook Shepard for a scarecrow. Today, his interred ashes rest in the sacred space of the Washington National Cathedral .

At an appearance in Chicago last October, Judy Shepard credited The Laramie Project with humanizing her son’s story for the world and keeping him alive in their popular imagination. “I think every school should be performing The Laramie Project ,” she said.

Read more: Matthew Shepard: 20 years later, the killing hasn’t stopped

The mere fact of the play’s existence – much less its worldwide performance history – “has made the world a better place,” said Jason Marsden, Executive Vice President of The Matthew Shepard Foundation . “It has given courage and pride to besieged, misunderstood souls in Uganda. It has defied homophobia in rural Poland. It has helped numberless LGBTQ+ people young and old to stand up, come out and live their truth. It has gently queered the high-school literary canon and literally inspired the formation of entire community theatres in rural America.”

In the 2002-03 theatre season alone, there were 440 professional, amateur and school productions of The Laramie Project , according to The New York Times . Tectonic statistics show there have been 2,273 licensed productions over the past 10 years, which is as far back as their records go.

“Night after night, year after year, The Laramie Project has sent audiences home with fresh insight and questions about their own hearts and those of their neighbors,” Marden said. “And it shows no sign of ever stopping.”

And that’s what most fills Kaufman with gratitude.

“The fact that humans of all ages and backgrounds from all around the world are willing to carry that torch of The Laramie Project onward fills me with hope for our future,” Kaufman said.

Hate crimes motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year high in 2018, according to FBI statistics . And, even in 2020, Wyoming remains one of only four states without a single hate-crime statute.

“The fact that hate crimes are on the rise technically tells us only that more of these crimes are being reported,” Marsden said. “But the fact that this rise has occurred across all categories, be they religious, racial, ethnic, sexual or gender-related, at the same time that a measurable rise in hateful rhetoric is also going on in our country, is probably also telling us that more people feel free to subject their neighbors to criminal attacks based on their identities. And that tells us, grimly, that we likely have even farther to go now than we did five or 10 years ago.”

The original 2000 creative team of ‘The Laramie Project by the DCPA Theatre Company included: Stephen Belber, Head Writer Leigh Fondakowski, Amanda Gronich, Mercedes Herrero, Director Moisés Kaufman, John McAdams, Barbara Pitts, Andy Paris, Greg Pierrotti and Kelli Simpkins.

The artists’ response to atrocity

When Kaufman learned of Shepard’s murder on October 12, 1998, he posed this question to his company based 1,800 miles away: What can we do as theatre artists to respond to this incident, and, more concretely, is theatre a medium that can contribute to the national dialogue on current events?

“The idea that a company of theatre artists could go somewhere, talk to people, and return with what they saw and heard, interested me deeply,” Kaufman said. And terrified him.

“But there are moments in history when a particular event brings the various ideologies and beliefs prevailing in a culture into sharp focus,” he said. “The murder of Matthew Shepard was one of them. In its immediate aftermath, the nation launched into a dialogue that brought to the surface how we think and talk about homosexuality, sexual politics, education, class, violence, privileges and rights, and the difference between tolerance and acceptance.”

More than anything, Kaufman wanted to know: How is Laramie different from the rest of the country – and how is it exactly the same?

Just one month later, on November 14, 1998, 10 members of Tectonic Theater Project arrived in Laramie for the first of six trips to interview citizens of the town. They were Kaufman, Fondakowski, Stephen Belber, Michael Emerson, Amanda Gronich, Jeffrey LaHoste, Sarah Lambert, Maude Mitchell, Andy Paris and Greg Pierotti. (Later trips included Betsy Adams, Robert Brill, Mercedes Herrero, John McAdams, Barbara Pitts, Greg Pierotti and Kelli Simpkins.) Of that group, only two had ever conducted interviews of any kind before. So rather than talking, they listened. They met friends and relatives of Shepard and his killers. Politicians. Ranchers. Professors. Law Enforcement. Clergy. Neighbors.

Read more: Moisés Kaufman’s 2000 essay introducing The Laramie Project

“One of the first things we noticed was that the diversity within our group turned out to be a great advantage,” Kaufman said. “Each participant had his or her own interests. Some members wanted to know about the ranching community, others about the gay and lesbian community, others about Matthew Shepard, and still others about the perpetrators. So in a very natural way, we began to hear a rich and varied collection of community voices.”

It is important to note, Kaufman added, that Tectonic was not interested in creating a play about Shepard himself, or his killers. It is instead a play that tries to capture immediate reactions to the murder and explore the underlying bigotry and hatred that enabled it.

Kaufman described that year as “one of great sadness, great beauty and perhaps most importantly, great revelation – about our nation, about our ideas, about ourselves.

“As a group of theatre artists from New York City, we had many, many misconceptions and preconceptions, all of which proved to be very far from the truth. There was no way for us to imagine what people would tell us.”

Tectonic further developed its material at Robert Redford’s Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah and at the New York Theatre Workshop . The decision – and the deal – to hold the world premiere at the Denver Center came together very quickly. On Kaufman’s way back to New York after attending the trial of Russell Henderson , he stopped in Denver and worked out an arrangement with then-Denver Center Theatre Company Artistic Director Donovan Marley (and a whole bunch of lawyers). A hastily arranged press conference was called to announce the deal on November 10, 1999, just hours after the contract was signed. Rehearsals would start just two months later, with a run of February 26 through April 1, 2000. Just six weeks after that, The Laramie Project moved to New York’s Union Square Theatre .

“Because this incident had taken place in the West, it became important to us to premiere our piece in the West, which is why we accepted Donovan Marley’s generous invitation to start the next part of our journey in Denver,” Kaufman said. “Thus began the all-important next phase that included the presence and participation of the audience.”

Marley said felt he felt a moral imperative to host the premiere at the Denver Center, given its proximity just 130 miles south of Laramie.

“There are two important legacies here,” said Marley. “For the theatre world, it was a validation of Moisés Kaufman’s brilliant vision of creating important topical works for the theatre by total immersion of his actors in researching the story and then developing the text together. But the broader and more important legacy is the impact on the audience of the ensemble’s humanizing of Mathew Shepard so that a homophobic America could find a son or a brother crucified on a Laramie fence – and resolve to change the culture.”

Fondakowski called Marley’s faith in the unseen – and unfinished – work a remarkable show of faith in the project.

“He didn’t think about the commercial viability of the play or the size of the cast or the risk in an untried work – or maybe he did, and did it anyway,” Fondakowski said. “He said to us: ‘I trust you to tell this story, even though you haven’t proven it yet all the way.’ That was an empowering moment that compelled us to make our highest and best work.”

(Story continues after the video.)

Video bonus: The Denver press conference

The Denver chapter begins

When Tectonic company members arrived in Denver, the play had only two acts, “because Moisés wasn’t sure the audience could sit through a three-act play with such challenging subject matter,” Fondakowski said. “It was through the rehearsal process that we discovered the third act should revolve around the trials of the two perpetrators, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney.”

The January 2000 cover of American Theatre magazine.

No one knew what to expect from those first Denver audiences. Laramie was a small university and ranching town of 27,000. Denver was a nearby metropolis of 2 million, and a community still very much reeling just months after the massacre at Columbine High School.

Fondakowski’s strongest memory of Opening Night is a feeling of nervous excitement. She had zero sense that this was the start of something that would change the face of the American theatre. She was just grateful that the audience responded, as she put it, respectfully and positively.

‘Denver audiences responded with the kind of dignity that elevated the story and uplifted the narrative to an almost iconic status.’ – Leigh Fondakowski

“You have to remember, this was not the world we live in now in terms of gay representation on stage and in the media and in the world as a whole,” she said. “We weren’t sure the audiences in the West wouldn’t be homophobic and reject the play on the basis of their morality or religion. Instead, the Denver audiences responded with the kind of dignity that elevated the story and uplifted the narrative to an almost iconic status. I remember feeling very moved that they listened, that they cared, that they were engaged. Matthew’s story was legitimized.”

Denver Post theatre critic Sanra C. Dillard wrote: “Looking not only into their hearts and minds, but into their very souls, The Laramie Project shines a strong but sympathetic spotlight on the people of a small Wyoming town whose lives were turned upside down by a killing that made them the focus of the entire world.” The staging played out on a bare Ricketson Theatre stage dressed only with a few wooden tables and chairs, enhanced by videos of cloud-painted Wyoming skies. “Peopled with memorable characters and a thought-provoking message that forces each of us to examine our own beliefs,” Dillard added, “it needs nothing else.”

(Story continues below the photos.)

Photo gallery: Original production photos from Denver

Click here to see more Denver photos

The New York run that immediately followed, however, “was not commercially successful,” Fondakowski said. “We had no idea the play would have a life beyond the original company who made it.”

The company fulfilled its promise to the people of Laramie by bringing the play there in 2002. An initial small burst of professional productions had waned, when something unexpected happened: A slow burn.

“Amateur productions just started popping up,” Fondakowski said. “Then more and more colleges did the play. Then high schools.”

That same year, HBO released a film adaptation featuring major stars jostling for the opportunity to lend their support, including Laura Linney, Peter Fonda, Steve Buscemi, Christina Ricci, Bill Irwin, Janeane Garofalo, Ben Foster, Terry Kinney, Amy Madigan, Dylan Baker, Michael Emerson, Kathleen Chalfant and Clea Duvall.

From there, the slow burn soon became a groundswell. One that made plain, “This play was needed,” Fondakowski said. “This play became a way for theatre companies and students everywhere to talk about homophobia in the places that they lived.”

The Laramie Project has since been staged everywhere from Kaufman’s hometown in Caracas, Venezuela, to Norway and South Korea.

An all-star reading of ‘The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later’ at the University of Denver in 2009 included the governors of both Wyoming and Colorado. Photo by John Moore.

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

Members of the Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to create the companion piece The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later , which debuted as a reading in 150 communities around the world on October 12, 2009 – the 11 th anniversary of Shepard’s murder.

Tectonic members did not interview either of the killers for the original play. But this company of non-journalistic artists made national headlines when company member Greg Pierotti landed a jailhouse conversation with McKinney, the first he’d agreed to with any “reporter” in five years. At a time when many were writing off the Shepard murder as a robbery gone bad, McKinney bluntly told Pierotti: “Matt Shepard needed killing. I don’t have any remorse. The night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals.” McKinney targeted Shepard, he said, “because he was obviously gay. That played a part. His weakness. His frailty.”

And from that moment on, no one could ever again credibly argue that this was not a hate crime.

“Greg Pierotti is the bravest man I have ever met,” Fondakowski said. “The conversation he had with McKinney was remarkable on so many levels. I’m not sure that people won’t still argue that this was not a hate crime, especially in this era of ‘alternative facts.’ I do think however, that for generations to come, we have this record, based on Greg’s commitment to the truth, and his courage to sit face-to-face with a murderer and try to better understand him. Why do this? So that humanity as a whole can heal and art can provide the space for that growth and reflection.”

Read more: Greg Pierotti’s jailhouse interview with Aaron McKinney

Ten Years Later also chronicles advancements in the gay-rights movement. Jim Osborn, a close friend of Shepard’s and a “living character” in Ten Years Later, paid a visit to Denver School of the Arts in 2015 on the occasion of it becoming the first high school in the country to have staged both parts of The Laramie Project . “It’s all horrible, isn’t it?” Osborn told the students. “We don’t like to talk about things that hurt us, but we have to. Because otherwise, we end up growing new Russell Hendersons and new Aaron McKinneys.”

But, he also told them, things are getting better: Two months before, he said to cheers, Osborn and his husband had become the first gay couple to register for a marriage license in Johnson County, Wyoming.

The L words: Laramie and Legacy

Fondakowski says it has been “incredibly moving” to see how vital The Laramie Project has been in the life of so many communities over the past 20 years. “The downside of this, of course, is that the play remains vital, when in fact it should feel historical or outdated by now. The fact that it’s not, and that this could still happen anywhere at any time – and does, just without the same media attention – is a call for us to not grow complacent.”

But then she thinks about the time she attended a school production of The Laramie Project and saw a boy not even yet 15 portray Harry Woods, a 52-year-old gay Laramie resident. “This boy was not gay,” she said, “and yet I saw him play Harry Woods in the most convincing way I have ever seen him played. He stood up and said, ‘I’m 52 years old, and I’m gay.’ Now, there is no other art form that can allow for a 15-year-old boy to convincingly say those words. I’m grateful to the theatre as a form that has so much potential, and for the young people everywhere who still believe in the power of theatre to change hearts and minds. Theatre does have an important role to play in the important conversations of our time.

“To me, the legacy of The Laramie Project is the fundamental belief that art matters in the health and vitality and humanity of society.”

Matthew Shepard

To many, the singularly indelible moment of the play comes when Dennis Shepard speaks at Aaron McKinney’s sentencing hearing, and takes the death penalty off the table:

“Mr. McKinney, I am going to grant you life, as hard as it is for me to do so, because of Matthew. Every time you celebrate Christmas, a birthday, the Fourth of July, remember that Matt isn’t. Every time you wake up in your prison cell, remember that you had the opportunity and the ability to stop your actions that night. You robbed me of something very precious, and I will never forgive you for that. Mr. McKinney I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives. May you have a long life and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

John Moore was named one of the 12 most influential theatre critics in the U.S. outside of New York by American Theatre Magazine. He has since taken a groundbreaking position as the Denver Center’s Senior Arts Journalist.

Read more: Our full interview with Leigh Fondakowski

BDT stage hosted am all-star local reading of ‘The Laramie Project’ in October 2018 to mark 20 years since the murder of Matthew Shepard. Photo by John Moore. Click here to see a complete gallery of photos from the night.

Alyssa Bresnahan as Thetis in the 2000 Denver Center Theatre Company production of Tantalus. Photo by p. switzer

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Twenty years on, The Laramie Project is as relevant as ever

The Laramie Project

The true story of an American town in the wake of the murder of Matthew Shepard .
"The Laramie Project" is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of "The Laramie Project," the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town's citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe's visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself. — yusufpiskin
Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard . This is a film version of the play they wrote based on more than 200 interviews they conducted in Laramie. It follows and in some cases re-enacts the chronology of Shepard's visit to a local bar, his kidnap and beating, the discovery of him tied to a fence, the vigil at the hospital, his death and funeral, and the trial of his killers. It mixes real news reports with actors portraying friends, family, cops, killers, and other Laramie residents in their own words. It concludes with a Laramie staging of "Angels in America" a year after Shephard's death. — <[email protected]>

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Healing after hate

‘The Laramie Project’ is an urgent story of resilience, remembrance and hope

Certain events in American history leave an indelible imprint on our collective memory. Matthew Shepard’s tragic 1998 murder in Laramie, Wyoming — which forever changed the country’s perspective on hate crimes and discrimination — is one such event.

On that dark October day, Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was brutally attacked, tied to a fence and left to die outside Laramie. This heinous act of cruelty catapulted the formerly sleepy town into the national spotlight.

Now, 25 years after Shepard’s death, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities presents The Laramie Project , a powerful and moving documentary theater production. Based on interviews with members of the community conducted by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, this groundbreaking play offers a window into how a small town grappled with the aftermath of a brutal hate crime that reverberated far beyond its borders.

“We have made big strides in the queer community, but unfortunately, the hate is even stronger than almost ever,” says performer and co-director Rodney Lizcano. “Yes, we have gay marriage, but the ferocity and timbre of the opposition has grown exponentially as well. The Laramie Project enables us to keep having crucial, essential conversations about homophobia in order to continue to grow.”

Based on hundreds of dialogues with town residents, journal entries by members of the Tectonic Theater Project and media coverage of the incident, the play depicts the harrowing tale of a community rocked by the shocking murder. The Laramie Project was first workshopped 23 years ago for its world premiere at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

“When Tectonic was invited to workshop Laramie , I was in the DCPA’s [National Theatre Conservatory] MFA program and got to witness the play’s creation in rehearsals,” Lizcano says. “They literally had pages and pages of interviews that they would grab and read together to figure out which ones created a story.”

These interviews, drawn from a variety of sources — including members of the town’s queer community, Shepard’s family and friends and people who knew the perpetrators — provide a glimpse into the raw emotions and personal experiences of those directly affected by the tragedy.

“I’ve tried not to portray these real-life people as characters but to bear witness to the truth in what they’re saying,” says cast member Vin Ernst. “My attention has been on the truth that is written on the page; instead of allowing my own emotions to color the lines, I am trying to focus on the meaning of each word to express what the text actually communicates.”

‘A community comes together to heal’

The Matthew Shepard Foundation, an LGBTQ nonprofit organization established by Dennis and Judy Shepard in memory of their son, maintains a close relationship with the theaters that present The Laramie Project . The nonprofit donates resources to support the production, in order to ensure the veracity of the story. Additionally, Andy Paris, a member of the original production’s Tectonic Theater Project, took part in a Zoom Q&A with the creative team.

“We were extremely fortunate to meet with Andy because it allowed our actors to ask questions to someone who conducted the interviews they are performing onstage,” says co-director Kate Gleason. “It was refreshing and honest to hear he did not have all the answers while still being able to speak to each character’s humanity.”

In addition to its gripping narrative, The Laramie Project is known for its innovative use of technology to enhance the storytelling. The original production featured a half-dozen television screens with footage of the actors in Laramie. Lizcano says the Arvada Center will be staging the play in a “thrust configuration,” with the audience surrounding the performers on three sides, and using projections to make it feel as immersive as possible.

“Because we have so much of that footage available to us, we thought we would take a cue from what Tectonic has done with its media-forward production and just turn up the volume a little,” Lizcano says. “ The Laramie Project has never been done before at the Center, so it is exciting to share and explore with the organization … We also work with a fantastic costume designer who is from Laramie. Because Nicole Watts knew these people personally, it will be very special to see that specificity in the production’s costuming.”

As the play unfolds on the Arvada Center stage, it offers a poignant opportunity to reflect on Shepard’s legacy and what it means for the struggle for LGBTQ rights today. The Laramie Project is more than just a historical account; it serves as a catalyst for change in the present and a glimmer of hope for a brighter tomorrow.

“I grew up in a very insular, conservative Christian environment, and I’ve been thinking about how impactful it would have been for me to see a story like this at that point in my life when I felt so isolated,” Ernst says. “Although this story was created out of a tragedy, that’s not really what the story is about. It is about how a community comes together to heal. There is hate, but there are also people who are willing to stand against it, so while The Laramie Project doesn’t shy away from hatred, it also doesn’t linger on it.”

ON STAGE: The Laramie Project. Sept. 29–Nov. 7, Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. Tickets here .

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BWW Reviews: THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER Makes its L.A. Premiere a Memorable Theatrical Experience

On October 6, 1998, a gay University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard , left the Fireside Bar with Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson . The following day he was discovered at The Edge of town where he was tied to a fence, brutally beaten and close to death. By the following day, Matthew's attack and the town of Laramie had become he focus of an international news story. Six days later, Matthew Shepard died.

In February 2000, Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project premiered The Laramie Project in Denver 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

In 2008, with the tenth anniversary of Matthew Shepard 's murder approaching, Moisés Kaufman started thinking about legacy, transformation and about what had come out of Matthew's murder. How had Laramie ultimately been affected by the crime and the media frenzy that followed? Several members of the Tectonic Project returned to Laramie to ask many of their original interviewees how the town had changed, and also interviewed people they hadn't talked to the first time, including the perpetrators of the murder as well as Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard . THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER is the result of those interviews.

On October 6, 2013, the 15th anniversary Shepard's brutal attack, I attended the Los Angeles premiere of THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Davidson/Valenti Theatre as a way of honoring the memory of a young man whose legacy has led to legislation for equal rights, Gay Pride parades, as well as open communication and freedom of expression, but there is still a long way to go.

Written by Moisés Kaufman , Leigh Fondakowski , Greg Pierotti , Andy Paris and Stephen Belber , and directed with keen insight by Ken Sawyer , the production will run through November 16 with performances on Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm. General admission is $25 on Friday and Saturday, and $20 on Sunday. Tickets are available online at www.lagaycenter.org/theatre, or by calling (323) 860-7300. Shaunessy Quinn is the assistant director and stage manager, and Jon Imparato, artistic director of the Lily Tomlin / Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center, is producer.

The cast features (in alphabetical order) Paul Haitkin, Michael Hanson , Elizabeth Herron, Carl J. Johnson, Che Landon, Ed F. Martin, Ann Noble , Dylan Seaton, Christine Sloane, and Paul Witten , with Johanna Chase on guitar singing/playing the moving "Morning Comes."

THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER is a play meant to be experienced, not just seen. And you will be fully immersed from the moment you walk inside this intimate theater-in-the-round staging with set design by Robert Selander and lighting design by Luke Moyer . With the silhouettes of the audience seated across the room against the background of rolling hills, sky and prairie on the theater walls, about 50 seats (some of which are taken by members of the cast), and the stage no more than 10 feet away, you will feel as if you are right there in Laramie, literally pulled into the lives of every person represented onstage.

Most of the actors play several well-defined roles, most often with the addition of a single piece of clothing, from the members of the Tectonic Theater Project conducting the interviews to the many residents of Laramie, some of whom were first introduced in the original play. But now it seems the town is split on whether the attack was simply a case of robbery gone terribly wrong or a hate crime from the very beginning of Shepard accepting a ride from the men. We also get a look inside the Wyoming legislature as the definition of marriage is brought up for a vote. And some of the residents comment that there is a feeling in the air around Laramie in September-October that brings memories of the crime back, even when they really don't want to remember it at all.

This is an ensemble piece and every actor was a marvel in their dedication and skill to being in the moment with each character portrayed. There were many stand-out performances including Elizabeth Herron's emotion-wrenching turn as Judy Shepard , Ed F. Martin's calm and understanding priest Father Roger, Che Landon's stalwart activist Romaine Patterson , Christine Sloane's retired sheriff Reggie Fluty whose life as a horse breeder allows her to no longer be on-call for the horrific scenes she once encountered (including finding Shepard tied to the fence), and Paul Witten 's turn as Greg Pierotti as he interviews the two men sentenced to life in prison for Shepard's murder. Dylan Seaton and Michael Hanson alternate in the roles of Russell Henderon and Aaron McKinney. The night I attended Seaton played the low-key Henderson while Hanson took on the real leader-of-the-pack criminal mind McKinney, each presented with real depth of character allowing the audience to experience what motivated each to commit such a heinous crime to what ten years in prison had done to them.

As Johanna Chase reminded us in song at the end, "After night, morning comes." May her words ring true as the world finally takes on the challenge of creating true equality for everyone, no matter their sexual orientation. And may the memory of Matthew Shepard continue to make a difference in all our lives.

The Davidson/Valentini Theatre is located at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place (one block east of Highland, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard), in Hollywood. Free parking is available.

For more than 40 years, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center has been building the health, advocating for the rights and enriching the lives of LGBT people. The Center serves more LGBT people than any other organization in the world with services ranging from LGBT specialty care to cultural arts programs; from housing homeless youth to hosting life-enriching programs for seniors. For more info, visit www.lagaycenter.org .

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A Review of The Film "The Laramie Project"

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Review: The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. A community coping with the aftermath of a hate crime

January 13, 2020 by Jeffrey Walker

How does a community face up to its history? And how does that community both move on while holding onto a pivotal moment that still elicits reactions from tears to indifference to denial?

These questions rose to the surface as I experienced the powerful production of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later produced by Dark Horse Theatre Company, in residence at Grace in The Plains, just southwest of the DC area on the outskirts of Fauquier County. But this show is well worth the drive down Interstate 66 or Route 29. (Fans of Dark Horse Theatre might be aware they often perform at ArtsSpace in Herndon.)

As implied by the title, this play is a sequel to Tectonic Theatre Project’s The Laramie Project , the landmark piece of verbatim theatre. On the heels of the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student, members of the New York-based theatre traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, to talk to friends, family and town citizens about Shepard and their reaction to his death, ruled a hate crime. By the time the two confessed perpetrators were charged and incarcerated for the beating and murder, Tectonic had amassed hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as court documents, news accounts and personal journals. This material formed the basis for the documentary-style play, The Laramie Project , premiering in 2000 which has now been seen by an estimated 30 million people around the world, shining a spotlight on such a hate crime.

Tectonic Theatre Project members returned to Laramie in 2008, to discover the long-term effects of Shepard’s murder, revisiting people and places from the previous visits as well as interviewing new subjects. They expected a short epilogue. But the Tectonic company members discovered many more changes over the ten years, making startling discoveries about the community and how the narratives of Matthew Shepard, and his convicted killers had changed. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later follows the same structure as the original play, which is effectively presented by director Natasha Parnian in an intimate, in-the-round presentation which brings the captured moments to life vividly.

If you have not seen the first play in the Laramie cycle, never fear. This sequel is structured so that context is offered to set the scene for what is to come. Through narrators – Cheryl Lane and Celia Cooley – each section is introduced succinctly. The narration also clarifies who is speaking at any given time since the ensemble of more than a dozen actors takes on nearly a town’s worth of characters throughout the two acts.

Portraying the members of Tectonic Theatre Project are Matthew Butcher (Andy Paris), Ken Gilfillan (Moises Kaufman), Samantha Mitchell (Leigh Fondakowski), Richard Padilla (Greg Pierotti), and Matthew E. Thomas (Stephen Belber), commenting on the action and conducting interviews with the Laramie citizens. These actors also take on a variety of other subjects throughout the piece, as well as the other members of the ensemble – all showing distinct characterizations, which helps the observer keep track of each individual.

Director Parnian is to be commended for using her ensemble with such precision and creativity. Among many strong moments, two stand out in particular. Matthew Butcher not only plays one of the Tectonic company members, he was challenged with portraying both Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, Shepard’s convicted killers. At the top of the second act, Tectonic member Stephen Belber – effectively played by Thomas – is allowed to interview Henderson. Butcher, as Henderson, appears soft, sensitive, and completely out of place in a prison, while showing both shame and regret. Butcher perfectly embodies a scared man who seems more like a kid. By contrast, when Tectonic member Greg Pieroti – a vivid portrayal by Padilla – meets McKinney in the same prison, he finds a relaxed, contented, braggart who laughs about what he did to Shepard. As Pieroti reacts with amazing restraint at the remorseless McKinney, the convict shows his true colors of hatred, disdain – all embodied with a palpable physical confidence by Butcher.

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The same trio of actors, when portraying Paris and two of the investigating officers from Shepard’s original case, use just a few benches to reconstruct the crime scene – a rustic fence on the outskirts of Laramie where McKinney with Henderson’s help tied up and beat Matthew to death.

Singling out Butcher, Thomas and Padilla is not to diminish the rest of the engaging ensemble who rise to the challenge of playing multiple characters with simple change of a hat, a scarf or a physical change. Others include Ken Gilfillan, as Moises Kaufman, reacting to an editorial in the local paper or interviewing Shepard’s still grieving mother Judy, played with emotional impact by Kimberly Kemp. Star Babatoon as Catherine Connolly, triumphant when the state legislature defeats a discriminatory bill or her spot-on portrayal of Henderson’s frail and elderly grandmother pleading her grandson’s case one more time. Nailah Hunter, Marcia Murray, Angie Mirae, Cary Reese, Brandy Smith, and Allison Turkel each contribute as ensemble members throughout the performance.

It should be noted this account of the crime was later investigated by ABC’s “20/20,” positing it was not a anti-gay hate crime but a robbery or drug deal gone wrong. As Tectonic Theatre members discover, the counter-narrative had taken hold in Laramie, with many citizens now believing the spin and forgetting what had been established during with trial and convictions ten years before.

The documentary-style of both plays in the Laramie cycle could have ended up as detached sound bytes but the sensitivity of the Tectonic Theatre Project members and their care and attention crafting a strong, warts-and-all narrative of the Laramie community and their reactions to Shepard’s death and the progress (or lack thereof) in the world ten years on ends up as a most effective means to hold the mirror up to this microcosm. Dark Horse’s production took a challenging play and made it engaging and accessible in a most theatrical manner.

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later by Moisés Kaufman, Greg Pierotti, Leigh Fondakowski, Andy Paris, Stephen Belber . Directed by Natasha Parnian . Featuring: Star Bobatoon, Matthew Butcher, Celia Cooley, Ken Gilfillan, Nailah Hunter, Cheryl Lane, Kimberly Kemp, Marcia Markey, Angie Mirae, Samantha Mitchell, Ricardo Padilla, Cary Reese, Peyton Slade, Brandy Smith, Matt Thomas, and Allison Turkel . Directing Apprentices: Sarah Akers and Audra Jacobs . Stage Manager Peyton Johnston . Produced by Dark Horse Theatre Company . Reviewed by Jeff Walker.

About Jeffrey Walker

Jeff Walker has written for DC Theatre Scene since 2012. When not attending shows and writing about them, he is a theatre educator for Fairfax County Public Schools. Previously, he served as the general manager for a weekly newspaper and worked for non-profit arts organizations. He lives safely below the Beltway with his wife and family. Follow him on Twitter: @jeffwalker66

January 13, 2020 at 8:41 pm

Thank you for verifying exactly what the play was examining! So glad you appreciate our work.

January 13, 2020 at 1:55 pm

It wasn’t a hate crime, as I explain here: https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2014/08/11/magic-time-laramie-project-convenient-untruth1/

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The Laramie Project (2002) Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via HBO Max

The Laramie Project (2002) is a crime drama movie directed by Moisés Kaufman from a script he co-wrote with Stephen Wangh. The film’s story is based on the 2000 play “The Laramie Project” written by Kaufman. The story of The Laramie Project is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, and chronicles the aftermath of the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard.

Here’s how you can watch and stream The Laramie Project (2002) via streaming services such as HBO Max.

Is The Laramie Project (2002) available to watch via streaming?

Yes, The Laramie Project (2002) is available to watch via streaming on HBO Max .

The story is narrated through the eyes of the Tectonic Theater Project, a New York-based theater company that traveled to Laramie to conduct interviews with the town's residents. These interviews form the basis of the film, which presents a portrait of a community grappling with the impact of hate crime and its underlying issues. The film explores how Shepard’s tragic murder affected the town he lived in and those close to him.

The Laramie Project features a huge ensemble of cast members that includes Dylan Baker, Tom Bower, Clancy Brown, and Steve Buscemi. Also featured are Jeremy Davies, Clea DuVall, Peter Fonda, Janeane Garofalo, and Bill Irwin. Joshua Jackson, Terry Kinney, Laura Linney, Christina Ricci , Nestor Carbonell, and Mark Webber also feature.

Watch The Laramie Project (2002) streaming via HBO Max

The Laramie Project (2002) is available to watch on HBO Max.

HBO Max is a subscription video-on-demand OTT platform that is a proprietary unit of Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming & Interactive Entertainment. Some of the HBO Max Originals include Game of Thrones, House of Dragon, and Succession.

You can watch via Max, formerly known as HBO Max, by following these steps:

Go to HBOMax.com/subscribe
Click ‘Sign Up Now’
$9.99 per month or $99.99 per year (with ads)
$15.99 per month or $149.99 per year (ad-free)
$19.99 per month or $199.99 per year (ultimate ad-free)
Enter your personal information and password
Select ‘Create Account’

Max With Ads provides the service’s streaming library at a Full HD resolution, allowing users to stream on up to two supported devices at once. Max Ad-Free removes the service’s commercials and allows streaming on two devices at once in Full HD. It also allows for 30 downloads at a time to allow users to watch content offline. On the other hand, Max Ultimate Ad-Free allows users to stream on four devices at once in a 4K Ultra HD resolution and provides Dolby Atmos audio and 100 downloads.

The Laramie Project’s (2002) official synopsis is as follows:

“The Laramie Project” is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of “The Laramie Project,” the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town’s citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe’s visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself.”

NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.

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The post The Laramie Project (2002) Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via HBO Max appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More .

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COMMENTS

The Laramie Project
The Laramie Project is the movie to watch on the Matthew Shepard ordeal. Although far from perfect, this is a well acted and directed docu drama that tells a remarkable true story. Although far ...
The Laramie Project
The Laramie Project. University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard's brutal gay-bashing murder focused national attention as no incident had before on homophobia and related hate crimes. Moises ...
The Laramie Project (TV Movie 2002)
The Laramie Project: Directed by Moisés Kaufman. With Kathleen Chalfant, Laura Linney, Peter Fonda, Jeremy Davies. The true story of an American town in the wake of the murder of Matthew Shepard.
The Laramie Project (TV Movie 2002)
On October, 7th, 1998, two local men from the town of Laramie Wyoming, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, kidnapped a young student named Matthew Shepard with the intend to rob and assault him. Not content to pistol whip, torture and beat him senseless, they tied him to a fence in a remote area and left him to die.
'The Laramie Project' at BAM's Harvey Theater
"The Laramie Project," about the killing of a gay man, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming in 1998, returns to New York with the city premiere of the cycle's second part.
The Laramie Project (film)
The Laramie Project is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Moisés Kaufman and starring Nestor Carbonell, Christina Ricci, Dylan Baker, Terry Kinney, and Lou Ann Wright.Based on the play of the same name, the film tells the story of the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming.It premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was first broadcast on HBO in ...
THEATER REVIEW; A Brutal Act Alters a Town
Throughout ''The Laramie Project'' -- which has largely been shaped from interviews conducted during six visits to Laramie by Mr. Kaufman and his ensemble of actors and writers following the crime ...
'Ten Years Later,' The Matthew Shepard Story Retold : NPR
The 1999 play The Laramie Project explores the true story surrounding the death of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo., in 1998. The case, which became ...
The Laramie Project
Tim Merrill Film Threat. It's a compelling and horrifying story, and The Laramie Project is worthwhile for reminding us that this sort of thing does, in fact, still happen in America. Full Review ...
‎The Laramie Project (2002) directed by Moisés Kaufman • Reviews, film
"The Laramie Project" is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of "The Laramie Project," the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town's citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe's visit ...
The Laramie Project
The Laramie Project Reviews. Dylan Baker, Steve Buscemi, Laura Linney and Peter Fonda are part of a remarkable ensemble cast in this drama about the residents of Laramie, Wyo., in the aftermath of ...
The Laramie Project
Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard. This is a film version of the...
An Oral History of The Laramie Project 25 Years After ...
October 12, 2023. Original cast of The Laramie Project. 25 years ago, in the tight-knit town of Laramie, Wyoming, a young gay man named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, chained to a fence, and ...
Review: 'The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later' a haunting feat
"The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later," Davidson/Valentini Theatre at the Gay & Lesbian Center's Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 ...
Review: "The Laramie Project" a profound moment for Atlanta theater
The Laramie Project is one of those rare moments in the theater where — if you're very, very lucky — you see a company catch lightning in a bottle. This piece, under the inspired direction of Clifton Guterman, proves that Theatrical Outfit is that kind of company, producing that kind of moment.. Matthew Shepard was born December 1, 1976, the oldest of two sons to Judy and Dennis Shepard.
"The Laramie Project" continues to offer fresh lessons
"The Laramie Project," now at the Arvada Center, continues to offer fresh lessons | Review. On Oct. 12, it will have been 25 years to the day that Matthew Shepard died at Fort Collins ...
How 'The Laramie Project' changed theatre
The Laramie Project, drawn from 200 interviews conducted by Artistic Director Moisés Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project in the year following Shepard's murder, is now routinely studied in schools as a method for teaching prejudice and tolerance. The brutal murder, and Tectonic's efforts to understand both its underlying ...
Twenty years on, The Laramie Project is as relevant as ever
R The Laramie Project. Through 7/8: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-828-9129, astonrep.com, $25. Tagged: Astonrep Theatre Company Derek Bertelson Laramie Laramie Project ...
The Laramie Project (TV Movie 2002)
Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard.This is a film version of the play they wrote based on more than 200 interviews they conducted in Laramie. It follows and in some cases re-enacts the chronology of Shepard's visit to a local bar, his kidnap and beating, the discovery of him tied to a fence, the vigil ...
'The Laramie Project' is an urgent story of resilience and hope
Matthew Shepard's tragic 1998 murder in Laramie, Wyoming — which forever changed the country's perspective on hate crimes and discrimination — is one such event. On that dark October day, Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was brutally attacked, tied to a fence and left to die outside Laramie.
Review: THE LARAMIE PROJECT at THEATRE SUBURBIA
THE LARAMIE PROJECT runs through October 14th with shows on Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays. Theatre Suburbia can be reached at (713) 682-3525 or online through www.theatresuburbia.org . The ...
BWW Reviews: THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER Makes its L.A
THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER is a play meant to be experienced, not just seen. And you will be fully immersed from the moment you walk inside this intimate theater-in-the-round staging ...
A Review of The Film "The Laramie Project"
The Laramie Project" tells the story of a group of young people creating a play about the events that happened in the town of Laramie, Wyoming. The group conducted interviews about the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student that had accusedly hit on two straight teenagers at a bar. These teenagers then kidnapped Matthew, tied him to a post ...
Review: The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. A community coping with
On the heels of the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student, members of the New York-based theatre traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, to talk to friends, family and town citizens about Shepard and their reaction to his death, ruled a hate crime. By the time the two confessed perpetrators were charged and incarcerated for ...
The Laramie Project (2002) Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via ...
The Laramie Project (2002) is a crime drama movie directed by Moisés Kaufman from a script he co-wrote with Stephen Wangh. The film's story is based on the 2000 play "The Laramie Project ...

The Laramie Project

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How ‘The Laramie Project’ changed theatre – and the world

The groundbreaking, Denver-born play’s legacy, 20 years later: Art matters

The artists’ response to atrocity

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The Denver chapter begins

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The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

The L words: Laramie and Legacy

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